Settlement of $7M paid in near-drowning case

A woman who suffered brain damage after she nearly drowned will receive a $7 million settlement payment from Erie County, NY. The county was blamed in a lawsuit for not properly training or supervising lifeguards at the pool owned by the City of Buffalo and operated by the county. Jannette Morales, who was 37 at the time of the August 2009 incident, was pulled out of the water by her son after he

Study: Doctors lie to patients

Doctors sometimes lie to their patients. That acknowledgement came to light recently in the results of a nationwide survey of some 1,800 physicians in which one in 10 doctors said they had told a patient "something that was not true" in the past year. And it got worse. While in some cases doctors fibbed simply to buoy a patient's spirits by putting the best possible spin on their condition, the

Faulty pool slide brings punitive damages award

A woman who went to a relative's house for a swim was left a quadriplegic and later died when a slide at the pool collapsed and she broke her neck. A Massachusetts jury recently awarded one of the largest verdicts in the state in recent years when it handed down a $20.6 million -- including both compensatory and punitive damages -- to the family of Robin Aleo, who had been visiting from Colorado.

Long wait at hospital resulted in amputations

Malyia Jeffers was two years old when her parents took her to the emergency room of Methodist Hospital in Sacramento, CA, last year with a fever, skin discoloration and weakness. They were told to wait. And wait they did. Malyia grew weaker and sicker while they waited. Her parents repeatedly asked, then begged for treatment. But they were told to keep waiting. It was five hours before the baby

Salesman to collect millions in whistleblower lawsuit

The U.S. False Claims Act has made a salesman a millionaire while reaping a large reimbursement for the U.S. Government. Among the recent - and burgeoning -- whistleblower cases is that of Boston Scientific's Guidant LLC unit, which agreed to pay $9.25 million to settle a claim that it overbilled the government and private hospitals for heart pacemakers and defibrillators. The lawsuit was filed