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Continued From Page 2
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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Safety Tips For Workers
Coming To Your Home
Check with family or friends to find a good
service company.
- Ask questions
Who are they sending to do the work?
Does the company do criminal background checks?
- Do not be home alone when a technician is working.
- Hire only licensed or union workers.
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Continued From Page 3
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.
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| 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
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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
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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
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The 2000
Medical Malpractice
Non-Economic
Damages Cap In
Missouri Is Now
$528,000
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