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The plaintiffs' perseverance in pursuing their claims brought press coverage and awareness to the dangers posed by service workers who come to our homes (See Safety Tips); and caused Reddi Root'r to change its policy to require criminal background checks on all of its employees. The ABC News program 20/20 has spoken with the Bales family and is going to run a program featuring the Bales case and other similar cases across the country where service employees with violent criminal backgrounds assaulted, raped or murdered customers.

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with a one-minute apgar score of one. As a consequence of the failure to properly resuscitate Kaitlyn, she remained in an asphyxial state and eventually sustained irreversible brain injury.

Kaitlyn has cerebral palsy with spastic quadriplegia. She is unable to utilize speech, is blind and severly hearing impaired. She is undergoing therapy to maximize the skills and abilities she has; but no matter what anybody does, Kaitlyn is going to have to live with the severe consequence of this tragic case of medical negligence for the remainder of her life. We wish Kaitlyn and her family the vest of everything as they continue to deal with the aftermath of this terrible tragedy.

Failure To Diagnose Breast Cancer:
Difficult But Satisfying Cases

Our firm has recently concluded two failure to diagnose breast cancer cases, one in Missouri and one in Kansas, each of which presented interesting legal issues. Failure to diagnose breast cancer cases are a difficult subcategory of medical negligence cases. The issues on liability and particularly causation are medically complex and there are "defense" experts available who will testify that any delay, no matter how long, would not have made a difference in the patient's outcome. As we have learned over the years, failure to diagnose cancer cases

are also among the most emotionally taxing because of our close association with our clients and the fact many of the clients do not survive the litigation.

In a recently concluded Missouri case, Vic Bergman and Steve Six represented Carolyn (last name withheld) and her husband in a failure to diagnose breast cancer case against a Kansas City area obstetrician.

In September of 1994, when she was a 34-year-old mother of two, Carolyn noticed lumps in her breast. She discussed her findings with her obstetrician following the birth of her third child, who

told her it was nothing to worry about, just fibrocystic disease, and he recorded "WNL" (within normal limits) in his medical record. At his deposition, the doctor explained that he wrote "WNL" because he considered the lumps to be within the normal range of findings. Carolyn continued