New York Malpractice & Injury Lawyer Blog

April 22, 2016

What to Expect After Infant Brain Injury

by Bottar Law, PLLC

The arrival of a child is an exciting time, until your child is diagnosed with a birth injury. There are a variety of injuries that can be present at birth but perhaps one of the most traumatic is one that involves the brain. While every infant is unique and no two injuries are the same, you can generally expect your child to recover in certain ways depending on the diagnosis. Here is what you need to know.

Mild Brain Damage

Most infants are able to fully recover from mild brain damage with the right treatments and therapies. It can take years to recover in some instances, and your child may seem to be recovering only to take two steps backward. That said, this is completely normal, and most children do recover.

April 21, 2016

Inmate Has Kidney Removed and Files Lawsuit

by Bottar Law, PLLC

An inmate at a state prison in Wilsonville, Oregon has filed a lawsuit against the sate, claiming that she was improperly treated for a kidney stone and, as a result, had to have a kidney removed.

Linda Anne Bond, 62, filed the medical malpractice suit, alleging negligence on the part of the medical professionals at the prison in which she is an inmate.

According to reports, while jailed in Douglas County, Bond complained of intense pain in her abdomen. Medical staff reviewed X-ray images of Bond and found a kidney stone in her left kidney. By the time she was transported to Coffee Creek Correctional Facility, she had severe pain, fevers and blood in her urine.

April 20, 2016

Quick Medical Malpractice Facts

by Bottar Law, PLLC

Medical malpractice seems to be in the news frequently lately. From doctors who remove the wrong ribs to people who have surgery meant for other people, cases of medical malpractice are downright scary. If you want to know the down and dirty of medical malpractice, we have facts that you may be interested in.

1. There are between 44,000 and 98,000 people in this country who die every year due to medical errors that were entirely preventable.

2. Medical errors cost society as a whole between $17 and $29 billion each year.

April 19, 2016

What Is the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program?

by Bottar Law, PLLC

Vaccination_contre_la_grippe_A_(H1N1)_de_2009 The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, or VICP, is a federal program that offers compensation to people who have been injured due to specific childhood vaccines. Those who are eligible for compensation, or their guardians, can forego the court system and go through this process instead. Claims are awarded from the recovery’s fund.

What is the Purpose?

Three decades ago, lawsuits began to hit the court system in record numbers. These lawsuits claimed that people had been injured by childhood vaccines. The lawsuits acted as a sort of deterrent, causing many companies to stop developing new vaccines, even if they had been proven to have a social benefit.

April 18, 2016

New York Drivers May Be Required to Submit Phone for Testing

by Bottar Law, PLLC

Your phone and what you do with it is your business, right? Wrong. That won’t be the case if lawmakers in New York have anything to do with it. A bill submitted would force any driver involved in an accident to submit their phone for testing to determine whether or not they were using it immediately preceding the accident.

Purportedly, the new “textalyzer” would not analyze any private information. Instead, it would simply look to ascertain if a driver had been using their phone in any manner prior to the accident. That is…was the driver distracted by their cell phone. Any person who refused to turn their phone over would face an immediate license suspension.

Distracted driving is one of the most dangerous habits that people have. In fact, it could be called one of the most deadly. Still, 67% of drivers admit to using their phones behind the wheel.

April 15, 2016

Can an Orthodontist be Sued for Medical Malpractice?

by Bottar Law, PLLC

maxresdefault Can an orthodontist be sued for medical malpractice? The short answer to that question is ‘yes’. An orthodontist is a health care professional like any other and, as such, has a duty to provide a certain standard of care. When an orthodontist fails to meet that standard, a patient may be due compensation under the law. Before you reach out to call an attorney, there are some things to keep in ind.

Firstly, just because something goes wrong with your orthodontic care does not mean that you have a medical malpractice case. When you have braces put on your teeth, you are excepting some level of risk. Complications with orthodontics are not out of the ordinary. In fact, if you remember signing paperwork before your braces were put on, chances are that there was some fine print outlining those risks and your acceptance of them.

They key to a successful orthodontic malpractice case is the look closely at the details. What led to the harm? Would another orthodontist have treated you the same way? If your orthodontist did not provide the same level of care that another would have and you were harmed, you may have a case. Orthodontic malpractice injuries typically occur with:

April 14, 2016

Indiana Man Wakes Up with No Teeth

by Bottar Law, PLLC

Dental_Chair_UMSOD Imagine going to the dentist to have a tooth or two pulled only to wake up with no teeth at all. That is exactly what happened in March to Donny Grisby, a man from Indiana.

According to Grisby, he went to White River Dental with the expectation of having four wisdom teeth removed. Grisby was taken into the treatment area and his wife sat in the waiting room. After several hours had passed, his wife began asking questions.

It was then that his wife was told that all of Grisby’s teeth had been removed. She was told that the doctors were afraid that the infection from one abscessed tooth had spread, so they took all of his teeth. When she saw her husband, he was droopy eyed and unresponsive.

April 13, 2016

Is Autism a Form of Medical Malpractice?

by Bottar Law, PLLC

5298664559_1c211c245d Finding out that your child has Autism can be stressful. Although the exact causes of Autism are, for the most part, unknown, there is a chance that your child could have developed Autism during your pregnancy due to negligence on the part of your medical provider. Before you seek out the advice of an attorney, it is important to understand just what Autism is.

Symptoms

Autism affects the emotional, intellectual and mental health of a child. It affects a child’s typical brain function. Cognitive functions are typically delayed, and your child may experience deficits in social behaviors. People with Autism may be more sensitive to light, sound and temperature, and can have sensory problems. Symptoms such as these usually become evident between the ages of 3 and 4.

April 12, 2016

Lead Water Pipes Poisoning New York Schools?

by Bottar Law, PLLC

One of the biggest news stories in the past year has been the water debacle in Flint, Michigan. In 2014, Michigan governor Rick Snyder switched the water source for the city of Flint from the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department to the Flint River. While the Detroit water source had been treated with corrosion inhibitors, Flint River had not. That allowed for the old lead water pipe to corrode, leaching lead into the water source.

What resulted was eventually the biggest health crisis in America, once the story hit mainstream media. Children and adults alike were poisoned, and water from the tap came out brown. While the logical step would be to buy water filters, the problem is that filters do not remove lead at these levels. That has left residents using bottled water for everything from cooking to showering. As of now, no real solution has been put in place.

What the Flint River Crisis has done, however, is expose the risk of lead water pipes all over the country. About 10 million homes in America receive water that passes through lead pipes at one point or another. That includes homes in New York, where the number of lead pipes simply isn’t known. There are too many water pipes all over the city to give any accurate number of dangerous ones. Unfortunately, many of those pipes also deliver water to schools across the state, and that has become a hot issue in recent months.

April 12, 2016

Doctor Removes the Wrong Rib

by Bottar Law, PLLC

Ribs_labeled It can be said that it is not unusual for people to lie to cover up mistakes. While not everyone can be accused of lying, certainly, there are those among us that will not hesitate to tell a little white lie to protect ourselves. Unfortunately for doctors, lying to cover up a mistake can have dramatic effects.

Deborah Craven, a 60-year-old woman from Milford, Connecticut was scheduled for surgery. The procedure was to remove her eighth rib because of a lesion. After the operation, Craven reported to be still having pain. An x-ray taken of the area showed why: The wrong rib had been removed and metal coils had been left inside her body.

Craven was scheduled for surgery. Before that surgery could happen, however, the original surgeon on the case, Dr. Anthony Kim, told Craven that the new surgery was not due to his having removed the wrong rib, but that enough of the eighth rib had not been removed.