Mohamed A. Salim, 39, served this country in Iraq in intelligence and as a linguist. He served at the Guantanamo Bay detention center. Yet, he allegedly still suffered a beating and a broken jaw in his own country because of his Somali ethnicity and religion. Salim is a cab driver who picked up Emerald Aviation President Ed Dahlberg at the Country Club in Fairfax, Virginia. Dahlberg proceeded to accuse him of being a jihadist and allegedly attacked him. Emerald Aviation’s website is down for “scheduled maintenance” in the aftermath of Dahlberg’s arrest.
Category: Torts
Consumer Reports has come out with a rather alarming study that shows that 60 percent of ground turkey tested contained fecal bacteria and sixty-nine percent of ground-turkey samples contained enterococcus. Even more scary was that 80 percent of the enterococcus bacteria were resistant to three or more groups of closely related antibiotics (or classes), as were more than half of the E. coli.
There is an interesting case brewing between Scientology and one of the many former members alleging abuse by the church. While not attracting much attention in the main stream press, Anti-scientology sites have been following an important case out of California where an appellate court has turned down a claim of the church that it can refuse discovery under clergy-penitent privilege. The church is using the privilege to deny a demand for a “pc folder” containing notes from interrogations of Laura DeCrescenzo by church officials. The case is important not only in the understanding of the privilege but a potential breakthrough for alleged victims of the church who accuse Scientology of being a cult or criminal organization.
There is an interesting case out of Des Moines, Iowa where Jennifer Conner is suing Iowa Methodist Medical Center over the alleged refusal of the hospital to make relatively small accommodations for her disability: shy bladder syndrome. Conner fears urination in public restrooms and could not complete the required drug test for a position with the hospital.
Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
I must begin this guest blog with a bit of a confession. When I first started posting on Jonathan’s blog many years ago I found that he had recognized me in one of his end of the year posts. He wrote words to the effect that what he found appealing in my comments was my tendency to reveal much about myself in the course of them. He had seen into the essence of not only my writing style, but also of the way I interpret the world around me. For me it always starts from my personal emotions about an issue and then I work to try to see how my personal experiences can apply to the world around me. It is the key to my empathy, which allows extrapolating my personal experience into a more global view of the world I live in. I imagine that is how it is for most people, but we all live in the isolation of our own consciousness. It is in truth not the best writing style and certainly not the most creative one, but at least limited by my own ability to be self critical, it is the most honest writing that I am capable of producing.
With that caveat in mind, let’s talk about my own health care experiences. I was genetically endowed with the predisposition towards heart disease. Both my parents and many of their siblings died in their early fifties from variations of heart disease. My Mother had perhaps four heart attacks (MI’s) and three strokes. My father had two heart attacks. As a family we were far from wealthy, struggling to maintain ourselves at the lower end of the middle-class, but my father had prescience that kept us from disaster. He always paid for good medical coverage and back then and most importantly medical coverage was affordable. Given my seeing so many medical issues as a boy my families medical insurance made a big impression on me. As a civil servant in New York City in lieu of an adequate salary I was covered by good health insurance and always elected to have the best, most costly plan. Up until the age of 36 this “Cadillac” (to use the current verbiage) plan wasn’t necessary because I seemed to be in good health, although the high blood pressure that kept me out of the Viet Nam draft was a concern to Doctors, but then I rarely needed to see Doctors. Six months after I married though at age 37, I suffered my first massive heart attack. With the help of my wife who nursed me through the recovery I seemed to return to normal. The hospital costs were huge and would have bankrupted me but for my health insurance. As my life progressed I had two more MI’s and then finally Congestive Heart Failure so bad that it led to me being put on an artificial heart device LVAD to keep me alive and finally a heart transplant to give me a new life. http://jonathanturley.org/2012/01/22/from-the-bottom-of-my-new-heart/
Thanks to my Medicare and my secondary health insurance I am alive today and nearing 70 years. My health insurance has probably paid out many millions to keep me alive and I sm grateful for that and in truth very lucky that I chose to be an underpaid Civil Servant.
My personal experience with the health care system came to mind when the Boston Marathon bombing occurred leaving so many victims with dire health care problems, many with loss of limbs. I can remember that day thinking what the costs of these patients treatment would be and how many of them would pay for it, even with the Massachusetts Health Insurance system. You see even though my Heart Transplant was covered, it is estimated that costs to the transplant patient are $30,000 for the first year after the transplant. I can’t cry poverty, but let’s say that those ancillary costs wiped out most of my savings. The loss of a limb and the rehabilitation from it can take many years and is costly. Prosthetics wear out and must be replaced. Depending on ones occupation their income can be adversely affected and their family lives severely disrupted as a consequence. While it is true that thus far some $23 million dollars has been raised purportedly for the victims how far will that money go towards allowing them to return to their normal lives? Given this what are the implications of the response to this particular act of horror in terms of the entire health care debate that is far from settled in this country? Continue reading “Health Care, Boston and the Luck of the Draw”
A retired State Department employee has been indicted on two charges of first-degree murder in the latest case involving “castle doctrine” claims. There is little dispute that the two teens, Nicholas Brady, 17, and Haile Kifer, 18, broke in the Minnesota home of Byron Smith, 64, on Thanksgiving Day. Indeed, Brady may have broken into the home twice before. However, Smith’s shooting the unarmed teens and his actions captured on his own videotaping system led to the charges.
Continue reading “Minnesota Man Faces Double Murder Charges In Home Burglary Case”
It appears that some things or some people don’t stay in Vegas. San Francisco’s City Attorney Dennis Herrera is investigating accounts of an illegally busing hundreds of psychiatric patients to California and other states with one-way bus tickets and no food or medication. This “patient dumping” involves the Rawson Neal Psychiatric Hospital in Las Vegas.
Continue reading “Somethings Don’t Stay In Vegas . . . Like Mentally Ill People”
Christina Pagliarolo is the latest former guest to sue a talk show. Pagliarolo joined the Rachel Ray (right) show at age 18 in 2011 to lose weight and says that she was treated negligently and abusively by the show and its trainer to lose weight. At the time, Pagliarolo weighed 260 lbs. The case is a variation of the type of bullying actions that we have seen in high school but here it is the show producers and trainers who are being accused of tolerating or participating in bullying.
Continue reading “Rachel Ray Sued By Show Guest Over Weight Loss Treatment”
Lawyer Thomas Moore has instantly become something of a legend in legal circles after he secured a $130 million verdict after being publicly ridiculed for turning down an $8 million settlement and losing the first trial and then facing a hung jury in the second trial of his medical malpractice case.
A judge has approved a $700,000 settlement in the lawsuit by Muslims against McDonalds for serving chicken that was viewed as violating the dietary standards of Halal. The class action was based on a case of Ahmed Ahmed, the Dearborn Heights man, who said that he bought a chicken sandwich that was not prepared according to Muslim standards.
Continue reading “McDonald’s Settle Halal Lawsuit for $700,000”
We have previously followed the case of actress Junie Hoang, 41, who sued IMDb after it obtained her correct age which she said made it more difficult for her to play younger roles. Jurors last week rejected Hoang’s remaining claims, leaving her with fruitless litigation that only served to highlight her age.
The Amazing Family Dental office certainly seems to deliver on its promise. Christopher Crist, a 21-year-old autistic man, claims that he went to have three teeth pulled only to find that the dentist pulled them all. That raises not only the possibility of a negligence claim but a battery claim against the dentist in tort.
In torts class, we often discuss Hegelian and other theories on understanding the value of objects. It is often the case that our clients come to us with the loss of property that has a higher value to them than is recognized by the law. This creates a difficult disconnect in seeking to make injured parties whole. The greatest example of this disconnect is the loss of pets. Pets are treated as a form of chattel and any significant damages are usually found not in the value of the pet but in the emotional damages for the human. This issue resulted in a significant decision in Texas Supreme Court last week when it found that damages for the loss of Avery could not include his sentimental value to the owner. In other words, Avery was a toaster. More friendly, more loyal, but a toaster when it comes to torts.
Continue reading “Texas Supreme Court Rejects Loss of Companion Damages For Pets”
John Goodman, 48, recently lost his freedom for 16 years and now it appears that he has lost his beloved adopted daughter. Goodman is the wealthy founder of the International Polo Club Beach in Wellington, was convicted of killing Scott Patrick Wilson, 23, while driving drunk. Facing a civil lawsuit from his family, Goodman has legally adopted his 42-year-old girlfriend, Heather Laruso Hutchins, as his daughter to protect some of his money. Now it appears his daughter is back being his girlfriend after an appellate court ruled that her adoption was a sham and fraud. It was the continuation of Goodman’s effort to establish himself as one of the worst human beings on the planet.
There is an interesting case out of Disneyland this month where a paraplegic man was stuck on the famous (infamous?) Its A Small World ride after a breakdown and sued for emotional distress. It is the scene of countless parodies of people going mad in the ride. What is interesting is that Jose Martinez, 52, was only left for 30 minutes and it was at the end of the ride as they were leaving the goodbye tunnel. While the music continues to play, it was only for 30 minutes as they fixed a mechanical problem. Nevertheless, Disney was hit with damages to the tune of $8000.