Atlanta Injury Lawyers Blog

It hasn't been a great 2010 for Wal-Mart.

Last month, a federal appeals court ruled that a class-action employment discrimination lawsuit against Wal-Mart could proceed. That lawsuit is expected to be the largest such suit in American history, and is expected to include more than 1 million current and former Wal-Mart workers who allege that they suffered gender-based discrimination at the retailer over the past decade. This month, the company agreed to pay up to $86 million in settlement of a lawsuit, which claims that the company failed to pay workers unpaid wages.

Continue reading " Wal-Mart Agrees to Pay $86 Million to Settle Unpaid Wages Lawsuit " »

A jury has awarded more than $14 million after deciding that the plaintiff contracted asbestos manufactured by Union Carbide at his family business during 1970s. The asbestos exposure caused him to contract a deadly form of abdominal cancer called mesothelioma. Mesothelioma also attacks the linings of the lungs and is almost always fatal.

Jurors found that Union Carbide was negligent for selling asbestos fibers to other companies, which had used the fibers to make joint compounds used by construction companies. An important fact established in the trial was that, although the products that the plaintiff was exposed to contained deadly asbestos fibers, the product packaging did not contain adequate warnings nor did the labels warn that the products contained asbestos.

Jurors also found that four of the compound manufacturers, including Georgia-Pacific, share some of the responsibility for causing the complained of illness.

In April 2008, jurors awarded more than $24 million to a doctor who contracted the same illness.

Continue reading " Large Asbestos Recovery at Trial " »

Every year, approximately 100,000 people are killed from prescription errors. We lose far fewer people to highway accidents every year, and yet, there is far more federal money spent in preventing highway traffic fatalities.

Eliminating human error from the doctor-pharmacist-patient chain may be hard, but not impossible. In the meantime, there are steps that you can take to prevent the 10 most common prescription errors.

According to Caring.com, the 10 most common prescription errors are:

Continue reading " Top 10 Prescription Errors and How to Prevent These " »

A study published in the May issue of the journal Pediatrics says that Spanish-speaking people in the United States are a higher risk of injury from prescription errors, because of poor translation. These errors are occurring in large numbers, because the computer programs that pharmacies rely on to translate prescriptions, are vastly inadequate.

The researchers surveyed several pharmacies in the New York City area. They found that four out of every five pharmacies, depended on computers to translate prescriptions. Almost all of them claimed that they got the prescriptions rechecked manually, but the researchers found far too many errors in translation.

Continue reading " Poorly Translated Prescriptions Increase Error Risks " »

Articaine is a local anesthetic that is used widely around the United States. Worldwide, more than 100 million dental patients are believed to be treated with Articaine every year. However, since the drug was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2000 under the brand-name Septocaine, there has been concern about its links to lingual nerve damage.

There has been substantial research into the lingual nerve injury risks of using Septocaine. In 2005, the Danish Medicines Agency published a report, which studied the risks from the use of this nerve block in dental treatment. The study was done to deal with concerns that Septocaine was linked to a high number of cases of lingual nerve damage reported to the Danish Dental Association, and reports of side effects reported to the Danish Medicines Agency. Danish authorities were particularly concerned about the development of paraesthesia from the use of Septocaine. The study concluded that there needed to be more research into this issue. However, in an apparent acknowledgment of the link between Septocaine nerve blocks and lingual nerve damage, the Septocaine package insert was changed to reflect the high incidence of Septocaine nerve blocks resulting in lingual nerve damage.

Continue reading " Atlanta Dental Malpractice Lawyer Discusses Articaine and Nerve Damage " »

MARTA v. Maloof decided yesterday by the Georgia Court of Appeals holds that a wrongful death claim is not stayed by Georgia Code Section 9-3-92 (Tolling time for Unrepresented Estates). This holding affects the time in which an estate may bring a wrongful death claim. The reasoning is odd and this case is not helpful to plaintiffs who are pursuing a wrongful death claim on behalf of the estate.