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Med Mal Lawsuits and Aortic Dissection – The Deadly Condition Often Missed in the Emergency Department

If left untreated, aortic dissection carries a mortality rate nearing 50% within 48 hours of symptom onset. Alarmingly, fewer than half of all cases are correctly diagnosed in the emergency department at first presentation. This article, written by Bethany R. Nikitenko and published in The Legal Intelligencer, provides a brief overview of the condition, the standard of care for …

Mandatory Safety Standard for Nursing Pillows Is Now in Effect

A new federal safety standard that aims to reduce the risks of suffocation, entrapment and falls associated with nursing pillows is now in effect. Nursing pillows are horseshoe-shaped pillows that are designed to fit around an adult’s torso and lift a baby to a more “ergonomic” position for breast or bottle feeding. They are not an infant sleep product, but their …

Mandatory Safety Standard for Infant Loungers and ‘Support Cushions’ Is Now in Effect

A new federal safety standard that aims to reduce the risks of suffocation, entrapment and falls associated with infant loungers and similar pillow-like products is now in effect. Starting on May 5, 2025, manufacturers of infant loungers and other “infant support cushions” must adhere to a mandatory safety standard which was unanimously approved by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) …

U.S. Leads High-Income Countries in Traffic Deaths

The United States leads 27 other high-income countries in its number of pedestrian deaths and overall road traffic deaths, according to a report recently released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The report regards preventable pedestrian accident traffic deaths in the U.S. as a “major public health problem.” Between 2013 and 2022, U.S. pedestrian death rates increased 50 percent …

DOJ Launches Corporate Whistleblower Awards Pilot Program

In 2024, the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division launched the Corporate Whistleblower Awards Pilot Program to combat corporate crime. The Corporate Whistleblower Pilot Program will run through 2027, before being re-evaluated, and is modeled on other successful whistleblower programs like those administered by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The Pilot Program is designed …

Tabletop Fire Pits Can Explode, Cause Serious Burn Injuries and Death

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) is warning consumers to immediately stop using alcohol-burning or other liquid fuel tabletop fire pits following two deaths and at least 60 injuries in the past five years. Tabletop fire pits — also called fire pots, miniature fireplaces and personal fireplaces — are small, portable fireplaces that can be placed on a tabletop or …

NHTSA Issues Final Rule for Auto Whistleblower Program

On December 12, 2024, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) published the final rule formalizing its whistleblower program, as required by the Motor Vehicle Safety Whistleblower Act. The final rule deviates little from the rule proposed by NHTSA in April 2023, which addressed definitions of key program terms, tip-filing requirements, award applications, how decisions are made on award applications, …

SEC Obtains Orders for a Record $8.2 Billion in Financial Remedies in Fiscal Year 2024

In fiscal year 2024, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed 583 enforcement actions and obtained orders for $8.2 billion in financial remedies—the most ever obtained by the SEC in a single fiscal year. The $8.2 billion consisted of $6.1 billion in disgorgement and prejudgment interest and $2.1 billion in civil penalties. The SEC also obtained orders barring 124 individuals from serving …

When Fun Toys Kill: The Products Liability Case Against Water Beads

Water beads are sold for children as toys, educational materials, art materials, sensory tools, and as projectiles for “gel blaster” guns. Adults use them as decorative, crafting and gardening supplies. When these small, colorful beads are swallowed by children, they do not simply get digested and pass through a child’s body. Instead, they absorb fluids and expand to many times …

April 30th, 2014

The right to a trial by jury in civil matters is firmly entrenched in the United States Constitution. The civil justice system is the only tried and tested check on corporate malfeasance, and it is only in the courtroom where individual citizens can bring massive …

April 23rd, 2014

A few weeks ago, this blog published an article about the overturning of a non-economic damages cap by the Florida Supreme Court, one that prevented families of people who died through no fault of their own from collecting any more than half a million dollars …

April 16th, 2014

In the month or so that has elapsed since we reported on General Motors’ massive recall, the automakers’ problems have not improved. Our article’s headline claims that 1.6 million vehicles have been affected, but apparently that estimate was on the low end and on April …

April 9th, 2014

Last month, Florida’s Supreme Court attacked the state senate for creating what one justice called an “alleged medical malpractice crisis.” The court was referring to the legislative “tort reform” package first formulated in 2013 which placed caps on non-economic damages i.e. compensation for pain and …

April 2nd, 2014

The last week in February, Michael Walsh published an article in the New Jersey Law Journal claiming that courts are “relegating failure-to-warn claims, the decades-old staple of medical products liability, to the trash bin of tort jurisprudence” in favor of parallel claims. Walsh points to three …

March 26th, 2014

Despite that Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey wrote a memo in 2011 advising all officers that civilians are permitted to take photographs or video footage of them in public places, some in the department have been slow to adapt. A year after Ramsey informed police …

March 19th, 2014

General Motors has recently announced a recall of 1.6 million of its vehicles, some of which are linked with thirteen deaths over the past eleven years. And federal safety regulators have announced that since 2003, they have received 260 complaints–two per month–specifically about how these …

March 12th, 2014

Kaiser Health News recently revealed that several hundred nursing home cases in Los Angeles County were closed without any investigation as part of the so-called “Complaint Workload Clean Up Project.” Anna Gorman, the author of the exposÃ©, notes that this is not the first time …

March 5th, 2014

In early February of this year, the Des Moines Register editorial staff ran an article attempting to confirm what this blog has been arguing since its inception: efforts toward so-called tort reform have accomplished very little when it comes to increasing the number of doctors …