Legal News You Can Use

Michael E. Seelie is a board certified civil trial attorney practicing in Jacksonville, Florida.

It is required of all vehicles to yield to the right of way when confronted with an intersection. This means obeying traffic signals and other official regulations when present. Pedestrians always have the right of way in crosswalks at intersections.

Emergency vehicles always have the right of way when their sirens are turned on.

If there are traffic lights present, the intersection is considered a “controlled intersection” where the right of way is determined by the traffic light. If the traffic lights become inoperative, the intersection becomes an uncontrolled four-way stop. This means every vehicle must come to a complete stop before crossing the intersection.

When dealing with conflicting paths without a controlled intersection, certain vehicles have priority over others in certain situations. Vehicles already in the intersection have the right of way. If two cars reach an intersection at the same time, the one on the left yields to the one on the right. When faced with oncoming traffic, yield before making a left hand turn or in any way obstruct the flow of traffic.

In Florida, all state roads have the right of way when the intersection with other roads is unmarked. Paved roads always have right of way over unpaved ones.

When approaching a sidewalk to enter a state road, whether it is from an alley, private road, driveway, or building, always yield the right of way to approaching traffic and pedestrians. A violation of any the above stated usually costs $60 and 3 points on your license.

We understand that if you have been in a car accident, or are the family member of a victim, you may be overwhelmed by all that has happened – perhaps suffering from emotional, physical and financial injury and loss. While monetary compensation cannot change what happened, it can help with medical bills, employment, rehabilitation and your financially stability in your future. 

If you have had an auto accident in Florida, contact a personal injury attorney.

The personal injury attorneys Michael E. Seelie, PA are committed to helping automobile accident victims in Florida receive all of the compensation they deserve under the law. We are dedicated to providing outstanding legal service to our clients. Client satisfaction is our number one goal.

We understand that if you have been in a car accident, or are the family member of a victim, you may be overwhelmed by all that has happened – perhaps suffering from emotional, physical and financial injury and loss. While monetary compensation cannot change what happened, it can help with medical bills, employment, rehabilitation and your financially stability in your future.

You have been in an auto accident and you are not sure if you are covered. Lets review the types of automobile insurance plans and what they are for.

First of all the most basic is Liability Insurance

Liability insurance, required by Florida law, will pay for the property damage and personal injury expenses of others when you are at fault for an accident, up to the limits specified in your own particular policy. This coverage includes your legal bills. The bodily injury portion of the coverage includes medical expenses and lost wages. The property damage portion covers repair or replacement of items damaged as a result of the accident, your car not included.
Next post we will discuss collision insurance.

A recent article from the Associated Press http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jJ6ymBVg8DzG8BDHwfWbr-ex1KKgD98LUR380 is reporting that more people are putting their faith in alternative medicine. The occasion for such reportage is the FDA’s release of its first guidelines for good manufacturing practices in the supplemental industry, an aspect of modern health culture that is unregulated in this country. Concerned interest groups say the rules are flimsy. However, this is the first step to give the FDA more presence in this growing field.

The article is mainly skeptical about the possible health benefits of alternative medicines. The rise in popularity is attributed to the public’s growing distrust of the medical industry. Interestingly, the AP reporter focuses on prescription drugs.

“Mainstream medicine and prescription drugs have problems, too. Popular drugs such as the painkillers Vioxx and Bextra were pulled from the market after serious side effects emerged once they were widely used by consumers. But at least there are regulatory systems, guideline-setting groups and watchdog agencies helping to keep traditional medicine in line.”

Unfortunately, the safeguards cited above are not as reliable as we would like to believe. In her book, The Truth About the Drug Companies, Dr. Marcia Angell draws upon her extensive experience as editor of the New England Journal of Medicine to reveal some of the ways drug companies evade regulations and prevent objective research for the sake of their profit margins.

Perhaps the most disturbing of these methods is the use of CROs (contract research organizations) to conduct the clinical trials that are the brick and mortar of any drug’s claim to legitimacy. Clinical trials are how drugs get FDA approval and doctor support before you are prescribed anything. CROs are for-profit companies that cater to the drug company’s need for data and reports, the paper life of their industry. Because of this financial relationship, the CROs are less committed to presenting evidence and objective analysis. More likely, the purpose is to make the drugs look better than they are by skewing data. This is as simple as altering dosage, suppressing unwanted data, or overemphasizing the positive results.

The result of such activities is clear. In the AP article, Dr. Josephine Briggs, who directs the federal agency that studies supplements and unconventional therapies, said “If we had highly effective, satisfactory conventional treatment we probably wouldn’t have as much need for these other strategies and as much public interest in them.”

Chrysler has joined the list of major U.S. companies to be bought and sold with government supervision due to bankruptcy. This time, the buyer is Italian car manufacturer Fiat, which plans to focus the Chrysler brand on environmentally-friendly, fuel-efficient cars. The deal was declared a success by the Treasury Department because it has essentially settled the bankruptcy process and puts the new Fiat-Chrysler alliance in a position to achieve financial viability.

The conditions that brought about this merger have problems. For one thing, some of the government bailout money came from the Troubled Asset Relief Fund (TARP), which was intended for banks, not auto-makers. Also, certain shareholders in Chrysler’s assets will not benefit as handsomely from the merger as others. But the most troubling condition of the deal relates to victims of faulty vehicles.

Before the sale was complete, it was agreed that Fiat would not be responsible for the vehicles that were previously sold. Product liability claims would have to be settled with the leftover assets not purchased by Fiat. Obviously, these assets are not very valuable, or else Fiat would have bought them. So it is unlikely that any payments for faulty vehicles would be available to those seeking recompense in court. Consumer groups have tried to contest this condition of the sale, but to no avail.

Michael E Seelie, board certified civil trial attorney,  represents injured people in Jacksonville, Florida.

Bridgett Robb had a heart condition (arrhythmia). Five years ago, she had a defibrillator implanted to prevent her from dying. More than two months before her medical device fractured and repeatedly shocked her, the lead had been recalled by the manufacturer.

These fibrillators are not cheap, even with health insurance. Nor are they so prevelent that keeping track of the patients carrying one in their chest is a difficult task. Wouldn’t you think the severity of the condition and the amount of time, energy, money, and care needed to get one would entitle Bridgett  to a little customer service? Two months is more than enough time when the case is this serious.

And then there is Nick Evola with another defibrillator. Nick  is an Army veteran. The surgery to replace the lead was paid with coverage from Medicare and insurance, and not by the manufacturer, Medtronic. 

So the maker of a faulty device is left unaccountable and taxpayers have to make up the difference. Mr. Evola deserves a working medical device, but does that right have to come at the public’s expense? The answer becomes even clearer when Mr. Evola’s attorney points out that Medtronic was aware the device was failing at “abnormally high rates but continued to market it…”.

It is not so surprising that a company like Medtronic would prioritize profits. They are a business. However, their business is unique in the amount of trust their customers must invest in their business practices. This makes medical devices a lucrative business. In 2008, Medtronic made $10 billion in profits, and is ranked first among medical products and equipment companies. As an industry leader, Medtronic sets an example, and this should mean more than the $6 million in lobbying for corporate immunity since 2008.

There is only one option to rectify this imbalance in American business and public safety. Congress must pass the Medical Device Safety Act. Over 14 thousand patients have been denied justice this year alone. Don’t take our word for it. Listen to U.S. District Court Judge Richard Kyle, who stated in his ruling, “The Court recognizes that at least some Plaintiffs have suffered injuries from using Sprint Fidelis leads, and the Court is not unsympathetic to their plight. … Plaintiffs’ remedy, therefore, lies with Congress, and not with this Court.”

The investigation into the crash of flight 3407 has led to questions about the experience and training of the flight’s pilot.

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With so many instructions and warnings on a bottle of prescription pills, one would think that the last person to disregard the intended use of a drug would be the doctor prescribing it. “Off-label” prescriptions are exactly that, and a number of legal cases are coming to trial because of the growing trend in pharmaceutical marketing of encouraging this practice.

Off-label presciptions exist in a gray area of medicine. Birth control is regularly prescribed for minimizing menstrual cramps and clearing up acne. Rogaine’s use for baldness was prescribed off-label for years before the FDA approved it. So that while the practice is not in keeping with FDA regulations, some advocates claim that the practice is not necessarily illegal either.

James Beck, a defense attorney and co-author of the Drug and Device Law blog, claims that most off-label use is beneficial and it is only the few disasters that get noticed. In fact, in 2008 the FDA rules for the promotion of off-label drug use became lax, but the Obama administration has yet to review these new regulations.

However the cases that have come to trial have not been about doctors finding creative ways to treat patients; they are about corporate marketing systems designed to create new outlets for sales.

For example, in March, Johnson & Johnson was ordered to pay the state of West Virginia $3.95 million for misleading doctors about the risks and benefits of Risperdal, an antipsychotic. The pharmaceutical giant is facing an even larger case in Texas. (http://industry.bnet.com/pharma/10001223/jj-fined-5000-per-sales-rep-visit-for-risperdal-mismarketing/).

 

Recent ad campaigns in Washington directed at “educating” lawmakers about the FDA approval process have cited that only 2% of medical devices fall under the category that is currently pre-empted by the Reigel v. Medatronic decision.

 

I recently contacted a representative for the American Association for Justice about this claim. He said that this argument is designed to obscure the main point behind the Medical Device Safety Act, which is to express in clear terms that no manufacturer is immune from accountability for their products. Product safety is a responsibility all industries must bear, no matter the number of products currently affected by the loophole made by Reigel v. Medatronic. What do you think?

…is currently being discussed by the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee of Health. The bill was introduced on behalf of the thousands of citizens who have been injured or killed by defective medical devices. When seeking restitution, they were denied their day in court by federal judges citing last year’s Supreme Court decision in Reigel v. Medatronic.

More about the bill can be found here, at stopcorporateimmunity.org http://www.kintera.org/site/c.juISL9MSJvE/b.4991999/k.B319/Facts.htm

According to AdvaMed President and CEO Stephen J. Ubl, legislation to “repeal the FDA’s pre-emptive authority” will stifle innovation and limit treatment options available to patients.
This statement is flawed, because pre-emption was never a case of federal authority granting invulnerability to companies with FDA approved products.
Counter to Ubl’s word choice, innovation comes from the natural checks and balances of a market that thrives on competition and the legal incentives to disclose risks promptly. It does not come from a profit-minded manipulation of a single Supreme Court decision.

How has the Supreme Court’s decision in favor of Diana Levine, a Vermont woman who lost her arm after being injected with an anti-nausea drug, changed the future of state-level tort suits?

Brian Wolfman, director of Public Citizen Litigation Group in Washington, says the ruling “reaffirms that preemption is the exception and not the rule”.

Justice John Paul Stevens of the US Supreme Court wrote for the majority when the Court upheld the state verdict in favor of Diana Levine. “State tort suits uncover unknown drug hazards and provide incentives for drug manufacturers to disclose safety risks promptly. They also serve a distinct compensatory function that may motivate injured persons to come forward with information.”

This affirmation is going to serve several tort litigation cases immediately, but it will also have an impact on laws and suits regarding medical devices. The day after the decision was handed down, The Medical Device Safety Act of 2009 (MDSA) was introduced to both houses of Congress.

Lawmakers have been encouraged by the Court’s ruling to think that medical device manufacturers could be held to the same determination, despite the Court’s previous ruling in Riegel v. Medtronic. In this case from 2008, the Court decided that state law tort claims regarding FDA pre-approved medical devices are preempted.

The Medical Device Safety Act of 2009 would allow for state-level tort suits. The purpose of the bill would be to give consumers recourse to remedy their injuries within the state court system without totally undermining the FDA’s authority.

As recently as January of this year, federal judges citing the Reigel decision dismissed 1,496 cases. Michael E. Seelie currently represents plaintiffs in pharmaceutical litigation in Jacksonville, Florida.