How Complaints From a Single Doctor Caused the Gov’t to Take Down a Public Database

by Marian Wang
ProPublica, Nov. 10, 2011, 12:20 p.m.

An agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that maintains a discipline and medical-malpractice database reopened it for public access yesterday, two months after the agency had first taken the database offline.

The National Practitioner Data Bank contains information used by hospitals, insurers, and licensing boards to track doctors’ records, check prospective hires, and make other decisions. A publicly available version of the database — which removed confidential identifiers such as doctors’ names and addresses — had long been used by reporters and others interested in patient safety. In the years it was online, journalists could reference the database and, with additional reporting, could at times identify doctors with uniquely long histories of being sued or disciplined for medical malpractice.

Then, two months ago, the government cut off public access — a decision that was sharply criticized by a number of journalism organizations and consumer groups.

What was behind that decision? Apparently, one Kansas doctor with a trail of malpractice suits.

A public records request by Sen. Charles Grassley and the New York Times turned up documents about the decision that shows that the agency closed the database days after the doctor, Robert Tenny, complained to the government. Thanks to the database, he told the Health Resources and Services Administration, or HRSA, he was about to get unwanted attention in his local paper.

We culled through the documents and pulled out some interesting snippets that give a glimpse into the backstory behind why the public database was temporarily shut down and why — even now — the restored database has some new restrictions.

A brief timeline:

Aug. 16 – A local newspaper reporter requested a comment from a neurosurgeon, Robert Tenny, through Tenny’s attorney. The reporter, Alan Bavley of the Kansas City Star, was working on a story about doctors who have went undisciplined despite histories of malpractice allegations. He had used both the public database coupled with publicly available court records to do his reporting.

Reporter requests comment for his story from the doctor and his attorney. (p. 6)

Aug. 24 – The doctor sent a fax to Cynthia Grubbs at HRSA. Tenny asked for help, alarmed that the reporter had identified him and was poised to report on his malpractice settlements. The fax looked like this:

Alarmed doctor asks HRSA to ‘PLEASE HELP!’ after reporter contacts him. (p. 5)

Aug. 26 – The HRSA wrote to the reporter, warning that he could face at least $11,000 in fines for each violation of confidentiality. The doctor was copied on the letter.

HRSA warns reporter of penalties associated with disclosure of confidential information. (p. 2)

Sept. 1 – The agency cut off public access to the database.

Sept. 4 – An article ran on the front page of the Kansas City Star, telling the story of a woman who died in 2007 after undergoing a brain surgery with Dr. Tenny. It noted that Tenny had been sued at least 16 times for medical malpractice but had never been disciplined by the state’s licensing boards. (Update: Worth noting that according to the report, Dr. Tenny settled at least six of the 16 lawsuits; the others were either dismissed or the outcomes either weren’t clear. “In at least one case, the verdict was in Tenny’s favor,” the Star reported.)

On the same day, the doctor wrote to HRSA again, this time with a copy of the article, and he expressed a desire that this “will change the way public data is presented.”

The doctor urges HRSA to “change the way the public data is presented.” (p. 7)

Sept. 5, 7, 11, 14, 15, and 20 – Dr. Tenny wrote five more letters to HRSA, complaining that the newspaper was making “a concerted effort” to end his career and that the article “significantly questioned the security of your data.” He also speculated that the reporter had gotten improper access to information from the full data bank either from a local medical center or from a disgruntled former Data Bank employee.

Sept. 22 – The Kansas City Star wrote a story about how groups were urging that the database be reopened. Dr. Tenny wrote to HRSA again: “Stay strong and keep up the good work!” (The American Medical Association, around this time, also wrote a letter supporting the agency’s decision to remove the file.)

More encouragement from Dr. Tenny. (p. 45)

Sept. 26 – HRSA responded to Dr. Tenny’s six letters, telling him that the publicly accessible database had been removed, and that the agency had contacted hospitals to remind them of confidentiality requirements and sanctions for breaches of confidentiality.

HRSA responds to Dr. Tenny’s letters, telling him that it cut off public access to the data. (p. 50)

Nov. 9 - HRSA restored public access to the database, but as many reports have noted, it comes with a major caveat. According to the website, users of the new database are no longer allowed to combine information gleaned from the public database with any other publicly available information in a way that would identify doctors. Or in other words, the government is now trying to tell the public — including the press — what it’s allowed to do with publicly available information. (The agency told the Kansas City Star that it has a duty “to make certain that information about individual practitioners remains confidential.”)

Sen. Grassley and others have pledged to keep fighting the agency’s interpretation of the law, questioning whether the database is ultimately meant to protect the public or to protect physicians.

“The interpretation of the law ought to be for public benefit,” Grassley said. “A single physician complained that a reporter identified him through shoe leather reporting, not the public data file. One complaint shouldn’t dictate public access to federally collected data for 300 million people.”

We’ve called Dr. Tenny’s office for comment but have not received a response.

Malpractice reform efforts stalled

Malpractice reform efforts stalled By: Brett Norman November 7, 2011 10:29 PM EST

In a bid to win support for health reform from skeptical doctors back in 2009, President Barack Obama pledged action on an item near the top of their wish list — malpractice reform. And he delivered an initial step: $25 million to test alternatives to the medical liability system. That won praise from the American Medical Association, among others. But since then, tort reform on the federal level has been put on ice, a victim of both tight money and bitter politics. Malpractice provisions in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act were limited in the first place — $50 million for expanded state demonstration projects. And Congress didn’t fund it. Nor did the administration get the $250 million it requested for fiscal year 2012 for the Department of Justice to explore alternative approaches. Meanwhile, House Republicans are pushing for the kind of reform they’ve backed for many years — a $250,000 federal cap on noneconomic damages and shortening the statute of limitations. But the bill, called the HEALTH Act, has little chance of clearing the Senate, which is controlled by Democrats, who have historically resisted tort reform. The two sides have been arguing for years, with the Democrats accusing Republicans of siding with insurers instead of injured patients, and the Republicans saying Democrats are beholden to trial lawyers. Meanwhile numerous studies have documented ongoing problems with patient safety, as well as significant flaws in the way the legal system currently handles malpractice cases, sometimes dubbed “jackpot justice.” Yet unless the supercommittee acts, it looks like tort reform will be left for now to the states — many of which have already taken some kind of action. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that tort reform similar to the Republican caps proposal would save $54 billion over 10 years. “It doesn’t look like anything big is going to happen soon,” said Urban Institute scholar Randall Bovbjerg. The $250 million DoJ request to finance alternatives including so-called health courts, safe harbor and “disclose and apologize” models, “could have been a meaningful effort,” he added. The ACA provisions, on the other hand, were worth little to begin with. The proposed $50 million “showed they cared about responding to reform and defensive medicine and such, but the restrictions in the law made it impossible for it to amount to anything,” Bovbjerg said. “It was only ever intended as a political sop,” said Philip Howard, founder and chairman of Common Good, which advocates for expert health courts to settle medical liability claims. Backers of health courts say they would be fairer and more consistent than the current way of handling malpractice cases. What’s left are the relatively limited projects funded in June 2010 with the initial $25 million through the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality — 13 planning grants of about $300,000 each and seven $3 million, three-year demonstration projects. And even that AHRQ program is on hold. The Department of Health and Human Services solicited applications for a second round of grants but “since Congress hasn’t funded it yet, the applications have not been reviewed,” an HHS official said. Congressional Republicans oppose the demonstration projects in hopes of positioning their tort reform law as a core piece — and a well-defined piece, after so much congressional debate — of their “repeal and replace” strategy for the ACA, staffers say. “The president’s demonstration projects are an attempt to profess interest in malpractice reforms without actually taking action,” Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) wrote in an email to POLITICO. “We don’t need to ‘demonstrate’ that medical malpractice reforms are effective; that has already been proven in the states where these reforms have been enacted.” The caps, already in place in many states including Texas and California, may provide more predictability for doctors and malpractice insurers. But they do nothing to address the underlying system, which is increasingly understood to serve neither patients nor doctors well or fairly. But the political debate over how to address the problem has ossified into a rote partisan exercise, Bovbjerg said. “The lawyers say the system works great,” he said. “The other side says it’s the worst thing since the fall of man from Eden, but if we have a little less of it, it will be fine.” In his book, “Healthcare, Guaranteed,” Ezekiel Emanuel, a bioethicist now at the University of Pennsylvania and a former White House adviser on health policy, laid out the case against the existing malpractice system. “Numerous studies have shown that the majority of patients who suffer a medical error are not compensated, while a select few win outsize awards. And on average, patients must wait nearly five years to resolve claims and receive payments from a malpractice case — six if the case is related to the delivery of a baby.” Among the alternatives being developed in several states or communities include the “disclose and offer” or “disclose and apologize” model. First introduced by the Veterans Administration and adopted by other health systems, including the University of Michigan, it encourages health providers to acknowledge and apologize for medical errors and offer patients compensation. If the patient rejects the offer and opts to sue, any previous admission would be inadmissible in court. Proponents say this model encourages providers to identify mistakes openly — and work on ways to prevent errors or harm from happening to another patient. Health courts, based on previous specialized courts, would provide administrative compensation as ordered by trained judges and medical experts, rather than the usual trial by a lay jury. These have not been tested yet. The safe harbors model would protect providers from liability if they follow established best practice guidelines, although in many cases, those guidelines have not yet been specified or widely agreed on. “There are a lot of ideas that need to be tested as a first step,” said Michelle Mello, a professor of public health at Harvard and a malpractice reform advocate who has applied for funding through AHRQ. The initial round of AHRQ grants provided funding to develop and test some of these models, particularly the disclose and offer variety. The demonstration grants went to university researchers, health systems, a public health department and a court system. And the idea was that some of the 13 planning grants would subsequently get project-level funding. “That was the hope,” said Joy Wilson, health policy director of the National Conference of State Legislatures. “But it’s not easy to fund anything in this environment. It didn’t happen.” Advocates of comprehensive malpractice reform are frustrated by the mismatch between rhetoric and action. And the AMA still wants a nationwide fix. “It will come back around — and sooner rather than later — because fundamentally, you can’t manage health care if you can’t manage health care justice,” Howard said. “But no politician wants to do it.”

The Hypocrisy in Medical Malpractice Debate

Posted by Mike Bryant
Monday, October 24, 2011 9:27 AM EST

There are so many things to look at in the ridiculous claims that are often made by tort reform proponents who call for medical malpractice changes. Two areas that often come up are cost savings and the argument that doctors get sued all the time.

A couple of recent items caught my eye concerning each of these topics:

- There is so much fraud out there in the health care system. Sure there can be cost saving if you simple rewrite the Constitution and take away people’s right to sue. You would still have society having to pay for all of the damage that was left behind. But, shouldn’t we start with the Medicare fraud that is out there?

The Washington Post recently reported that :

Miami health-care executive Larry Duran orchestrated one of the largest Medicare frauds in U.S. history, submitting more than $205 million in phony claims and landing a record-breaking 50-year prison sentence for his crimes.

But another piece of Duran’s scheme also caught the eye of prosecutors. They say he extended his fraud through his lobbying efforts, all aimed at getting official Washington to make it easier for mental health centers such as his to make money.

An advocacy group he helped set up, the National Association for Behavioral Health (NABH), has spent more than $750,000 on lobbying efforts over the past five years, including staging “fly-ins” on Capitol Hill and providing advice to group members on how to get around Medicare denials, according to the Justice Department. The group also held fundraisers for lawmakers such as Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and former congressman Kendrick B. Meek (D-Fla.), records show.

There is a lot of money out there that is simply being stolen and doesn’t seem to be as important to the tort reformers. There needs to be a crack down on the real problems in the system.

- Poptorts took a look at how doctors aren’t really afraid of the courtroom as long as they are suing. Including a United States Supreme Court case where they are fighting to have the right to bring the suit. As is pointed out:

Imagine not being able to bring a lawsuit in a situation like this, when doctors have clearly been wronged, and when the poor are going to suffer for it, right?

If only the ER docs saw the same value helping poor folks get proper treatment like this as helping some of those same patients who are negligently injured. For example, last November, we wrote about Florida legislation that would give ER doctors who treat Medicaid patients “sovereign immunity,” and cap their liability for committing medical negligence against the poor at $100,000.

I wonder if they really understand the hypocrisy and simply don’t care?

Find this article at:

http://stcloud.injuryboard.com/miscellaneous/the-hypocrisy-in-medical-malpractice-debate.aspx?googleid=294972

Senate committee tables medical malpractice bills – News – Virgin Islands Daily News

 

Senate committee tables medical malpractice bills – News – Virgin Islands Daily News.

ST. CROIX – A Senate committee on Friday voted to table two bills that would amend sections of the V.I. Code pertaining to medical malpractice – although some senators indicated they want to take a more thorough look at updating the entire medical malpractice law.

Doctors in white coats were sprinkled throughout the gallery at the Fritz Lawaetz Legislative Conference Room as members of the Senate Health and Hospitals Committee and a number of testifiers discussed the bills for several hours.

The V.I. Health Department’s attorney gave a mixed opinion on the two pieces of legislation, coming out against one and urging senators to defer a decision on the other until the department receives the results of an actuarial study.

However, Health Department Chief Legal Counsel Carl Richardson also said that he thinks the existing law concerning medical malpractice in the territory needs an overhaul.

“Instead of piecemeal legislation that seeks to disrupt the existing medical malpractice system, the Legislature, in my opinion, needs to take appropriate steps to amend the code to bring it in step with how medical malpractice cases are being currently handled,” Richardson said.

The two pieces of legislation, both sponsored by Sen. Alicia Hansen, that were discussed Friday were:

- A bill that would eliminate the government paying a portion of medical malpractice insurance premiums for hospital-employed physicians who also work part time in private practice. Currently, hospital-employed physicians who also maintain a part-time private practice pay half of the cost of the premiums.

- A bill that would eliminate the requirement for a proposed medical malpractice complaint to be filed with the territory’s Medical Malpractice Action Review Committee before the lawsuit is filed in court.

As it now stands, the Medical Malpractice Action Review Committee is tasked under V.I. Code with arranging for expert review of all malpractice claims before actions based on those claims can begin in court. In practice, the committee itself does an initial review of the complaint and does not seek an expert opinion at that point, Richardson said Friday.

Existing law also allows the plaintiff to file the lawsuit if the committee has not obtained the expert opinion within 90 days.

In addition to eliminating the requirement to file the complaint with the committee first, the bill also would require that the committee reimburse plaintiffs for the reasonable costs of obtaining an expert opinion, if the committee fails to obtain one within 90 days. If the court dismisses the lawsuit, the judge could direct the plaintiff to reimburse the committee for the amount paid for the expert opinion, under the bill.

Representatives from the territory’s hospitals – Schneider Regional Medical Center Chief Executive Officer Alice Taylor and Luis Hospital legal counsel Royette Russell – said that the subsidy for malpractice insurance premiums that the government provides is a valuable recruiting tool for the territory’s hospitals.

“We fear that removing this subsidy will drive doctors to leave the island and practice elsewhere, prompt them to limit the services they offer at the hospital so their premiums cost less or drive them away from the hospital setting altogether,” Taylor said.

She contended that removing the requirement to first file a complaint with the Medical Malpractice Action Review Committee would be a regressive move because the current review system works, gives the committee the chance to make positive changes in health care and gives the government a chance to settle out of court if the claims have merit.

Russell said that Luis Hospital’s position on that bill is that its enactment could “lead to a proliferation of lawsuits and will remove an effective filter against the filing of frivolous lawsuits.”

Dr. Anne Treasure, president of the Virgin Islands Medical Society, contended that changing the malpractice premium assistance provided to hospital-employed physicians would impair the collective bargaining agreement of the Association of Hospital-Employed Physicians and violate federal law.

She also said that the V.I. Medical Society “unanimously and wholeheartedly” disagrees with the bill removing the requirement for first filing a claim with the malpractice review committee.

Treasure contended that the national trend supports the activity of medical review panels before filing lawsuits in court, that all lawsuits – even frivolous ones – leave a stain on a physician’s record and that excessive lawsuits threaten the health of the territory’s coffers.

Attorney Lee Rohn testified that the existing medical malpractice law in the territory has never been implemented – at the expense of local taxpayers and victims of malpractice.

Not adequately compensating people who are seriously injured through medical malpractice costs the government far more in the long run, as the injured person may remain a burden on the public assistance system for years to come, Rohn contended.

There is no reason the government should pay the medical malpractice settlements for doctors practicing below the standard of care, she said, and she asked that the law be changed so that each doctor and medical facility be required to have malpractice insurance of $1 million per occurrence.

Currently, the liability cap in a medical malpractice case in the territory is $250,000.

Richardson said that a consultant currently is conducting an actuarial study that likely will lead to an increase in existing medical malpractice premiums, which have not been changed since 1993.

He urged senators to hold off on the legislation pertaining to premiums until the study is complete and can be discussed.

He argued against the bill pertaining to the malpractice review committee, contending that it would destroy the framework for early settlements in malpractice cases and “only encourage less than professional handling of civil litigation in medical malpractice cases.”

Richardson did, however, advocate for changing the law to agree with the way medical malpractice cases are handled.

Currently, the government is self-insuring health care providers against malpractice claims. Premiums that health care providers pay are deposited into the General Fund, and claims are paid through an appropriation, he said.

V.I. Code, however, requires that the government establishment a Medical Malpractice Risk Management Trust Fund to provide liability coverage and that the fund be managed by a licensed broker or brokerage firm, Richardson said.

“This is not being done,” he said. “There is no Medical Malpractice Risk Management Fund, and there are no licensed brokers or brokerage firms retained to manage the money which is available to defend medical malpractice cases.”

Richardson also described other ways in which the government is not complying with the existing law.

Because of this, Richardson said, several plaintiffs’ attorneys are asking the courts to have the program declared null and void “with the intent of overcoming the caps on liability and reaching beyond the fund into the ‘pockets’ of our health care providers.”

If the system is to remain in its present form – which Richardson contended is functioning adequately – the law needs to change to conform to actual practice, he said.

Richardson was asked to provide senators with proposed changes that would amend the law to meet actual practice.

The committee voted to table both bills indefinitely, with a unanimous vote of all members who were present when the vote was taken.

 

Read more: http://virginislandsdailynews.com/news/senate-committee-tables-medical-malpractice-bills-1.1218573#ixzz1b3Jki28j

Cerebral Palsy Malpractice Lawsuit Verdict of $29M Against U.S. Upheld – AboutLawsuits.com

Cerebral Palsy Malpractice Lawsuit Verdict of $29M Against U.S. Upheld – AboutLawsuits.com.

Tell Your Representative to Oppose H.R. 5

Stand Up for Patients’ Rights

One out of every three hospital patients is sickened, injured, killed or otherwise harmed because of a medical error.

Meanwhile, our members of Congress could be making their own grave error: they could pass H.R. 5, an extreme bill that would limit our rights and offer a handout to the medical industry by allowing it to go virtually unpunished when patients are harmed or killed.

Under this bill, the costs of medical mistakes would shift to injured patients, their families and taxpayer-funded health and disability programs.

Stand up for patients’ rights. Enter your zip code below and use the form that appears to tell your member of Congress to oppose H.R. 5.

Congress should focus on improving patient safety and reducing deaths and injuries. H.R. 5 does neither.

http://www.citizen.org/Page.aspx?pid=2920

“Hot Coffee”: Cup of Cheer for Plaintiffs, David Ingram The National Law Journal

David Ingram

The National Law Journal

June 28, 2011

Susan Saladoff, director of the HBO documentary, “Hot Coffee.”

As a plaintiffs’ lawyer in Oregon, Susan Saladoff occasionally made short films of her clients. She represented people claiming medical malpractice, and if she could capture video of what they were going through, she reasoned, they had a better chance of getting a quick settlement.

Saladoff’s latest film — which includes a story line on a Texas woman — won’t lead to any settlements, but it’s appearing on many more screens and will get more attention. Three years ago, she dropped her legal career and started work on what has become “Hot Coffee,” a pro-plaintiff documentary that’s a call to arms over tort law, jury awards and judicial elections. The film has been making the rounds at festivals nationwide. Screenings were scheduled last week in New York and Washington, and the film made its public debut on HBO on June 27.

“Hot Coffee” is named for the high-profile 1994 case of an elderly New Mexico woman, Stella Liebeck, who spilled McDonald’s coffee on herself and sued. Comedians, journalists and politicians mocked her case, adding momentum to the effort to cap damage awards.

The film is an aggressive attempt to channel the public’s sympathy back to plaintiffs — using Liebeck’s case and others. In graphic detail, it shows Liebeck’s third-degree burns that required hospitalization and skin grafts, and it notes Liebeck settled out of court for an undisclosed amount likely far less than her initial $2.9 million jury award.

Business groups are beginning to denounce the film. A spokesman for the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform said it’s as fanciful as the Flat Earth Society, while Victor Schwartz, who appears in the film as general counsel of the American Tort Reform Association, said he regrets participating in what he calls “the most effective piece of propaganda” that trial lawyers have ever put out.

To Saladoff, who was making her first real film, “Hot Coffee” serves up long-overdue balance to a national debate.

“I wanted to change the conversation,” Saladoff said. “The other side of this issue has monopolized the conversation because of the amount of money they have.”

The film came about after a midlife career change. Saladoff, 52, had a long career in plaintiffs’ work, starting as a clerk at the public interest firm Trial Lawyers for Public Justice. She learned trial work at what’s now Shadoan, Michael & Wells in Rockville, Md., before striking out on her own in medical malpractice cases. Representing injured patients made her feel like a champion, she said, and she served a turn as president of a foundation affiliated with the trial-lawyer firm at which she initially clerked.

That didn’t last. “After 25 years, the truth is you get sort of worn down,” she said. The defendants would have more resources, juries became less sympathetic and winning became harder. “It would get me angry that I couldn’t tell my clients that I could get them justice. They’d walk in the door, and I’d say, ‘The system is stacked against you,’ ” she said.

In 2008, Saladoff was a partner in what was then Davis, Hearn, Saladoff & Bridges in Ashland, Ore., when she decided to take a year off and considered running for Congress. The area’s Republican tilt — and the prospect of moving back to the Washington area — dissuaded her from a run, but she had another idea instead: make a documentary. Though there’s no shortage of films, such as “Erin Brockovich,” that lionize trial lawyers, no one had made a documentary about tort law.

“I really was waiting for someone else to make this movie, and it never happened,” Saladoff said, “so I said, ‘OK, I guess it’s me.’ “

Balancing Act

Bryan Quigley, the Chamber spokesman, agrees that the film is unusual, but he doesn’t see that as a virtue. “In the midst of all the evidence, they cling to the belief that America doesn’t have too many lawsuits, [and] that we don’t sue enough. They deny that the lawsuit industry is out of control, when the rest of the world knows that it is,” he said, reading from a prepared statement.

The Chamber, which is among the biggest business lobbying groups in Wash¬ington, gets particular attention in “Hot Coffee.” The film accuses the Chamber of throwing mud in Mississippi state court elections, and in 2009, Saladoff’s camera crew set up outside the Chamber’s headquarters to interview lawyers and businessmen as they made their way into a legal conference.

Quigley said the treatment isn’t surprising. “It was made by an activist plaintiffs’ lawyer who is a long-time leader in the plaintiffs’ lawyer lobbying group,” he said.

Schwartz, of the American Tort Reform Association, is a lonely voice in the film who supports corporate defendants, but he said in an interview that the film takes quotes out of context when he was trying to be balanced. The result is that he criticizes his own side — saying, for example, that some tort reform proponents used “scare tactics that didn’t really have a basis in fact.”

“I’m an ‘on the one hand and on the other’ kind of guy, and they would include a snippet of the one hand,” said Schwartz, who is also a partner in Shook, Hardy & Bacon. “I thought, ‘Don’t cut my hand off!’ “

Saladoff doesn’t deny that the film has a point of view. “It’s my truth. It’s what I’ve lived for 25 years,” she said. Told of Schwartz’s criticism, she said all the words he speaks in the film are his own. “I can’t help what he said. I’m going to use the things he said that are good for the film,” Saladoff said.

Most of the legal experts in “Hot Coffee” are aligned with the plaintiffs bar, including Joan Claybrook, the retired president of Public Citizen, and F. Paul Bland Jr., a senior attorney at Trial Lawyers for Public Justice. The largest trade group for trial lawyers, the American Association for Justice, wasn’t involved in making the film, but it is having a screening at its national convention next month in New York.

“Most people only have a limited idea of the necessity and importance of our civil justice system, and that powerful forces are constantly trying to undermine it or take it away,” C. Gibson Vance, president of the American Association for Justice, said in an e-mailed statement. Saladoff’s film, he said, helps debunk the myths.

Including the McDonald’s case, the film is built around four story lines. The others are a Nebraska family with a son whose brain damage might have been prevented at birth, a former Mississippi Supreme Court justice who was defeated for re-election and a Texas woman, Jamie Leigh Jones, who reported being raped while working in Iraq but whose employment contract with KBR Inc. required mandatory arbitration to settle the claim. (The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals let Jones’ civil claim go forward anyway; the trial is under way in federal court in Houston. See “Arbitration Not Mandatory for Ex-KBR Employee Allegedly Raped in Iraq.”)

During the next month, Hot Coffee is scheduled to run at least 11 times on HBO or HBO2, and Saladoff said she’s in the process of bringing it to as many as 30 film festivals. This month, it won a top prize at the Seattle International Film Festival, as the jury said it “makes dry legal boilerplate spring to life.” Stops at law schools are in the works, and Saladoff said a theatrical release is planned for the fall, targeted at small, art-house theaters.

Joanne Doroshow, another tort expert who appears in the film, has longer-term hopes. The executive director of the Center for Justice & Democracy, a New York nonprofit that sides with plaintiffs on civil justice issues, she said Hot Coffee has the potential to change people’s minds for years. “Moving forward, those of us who want to try to educate people about this issue will be able to point to this film and use it in educational ways,” she said.

Tony Mauro contributed to this article. This article was originally published by The National Law Journal, a Texas Lawyer affiliate.

Supreme Court to consider military medical malpractice case – San Diego, California News Station – KFMB Channel 8 – cbs8.com

Supreme Court to consider military medical malpractice case – San Diego, California News Station – KFMB Channel 8 – cbs8.com.

Jury Verdict for Hospital in Suicide Case Is Set Aside

By BENJAMIN WEISER Published:

May 4, 2011

New York Times

A jury verdict that cleared a psychiatric hospital in Connecticut of liability in a patient’s suicide has been overturned by an appeals court that said the judge should have tried to determine if jurors were prejudiced by a newspaper article published just before the trial began.

The Connecticut Appellate Court ordered a new trial in a malpractice suit filed by the estate of Ruth Farrell, a 41-year-old librarian in Westport who hanged herself in January 2002 a week after checking into Silver Hill Hospital, a nonprofit institution in New Canaan known for its celebrity clientele.

The suit charged that Silver Hill and a psychiatrist there, Dr. Ellyn Shander, were negligent in failing to appreciate Ms. Farrell’s risk of suicide and in their treatment of her. A Superior Court jury found in 2008 that neither the hospital nor Dr. Shander was liable.

But in a ruling made public last week, the appeals court said the trial judge, David R. Tobin, should have asked jurors if they had read the article, which was published in The New York Times after the jury was impaneled but before it began hearing evidence.

“The article here is extensive, factually detailed and so overtly inflammatory that it is difficult to conceive how a juror would remain impartial if exposed to its contents,” Judge F. Herbert Gruendel wrote. The appeals court did not question the article’s accuracy, but was rather suggesting it could appeal to the emotions and prejudices of jurors in a way that could unfairly influence their verdict. The article said the estate’s executor, David L. Kervick, met Ms. Farrell in 2001 when both were patients at the hospital. It said Ms. Farrell had directed that Mr. Kervick inherit half of her estate, valued at about $500,000.

Ms. Farrell had tried to commit suicide numerous times, the article said, and told the hospital’s medical staff that Mr. Kervick had on one occasion used drugs in her presence, and had tied her to a bed and forced her to watch pornography — assertions he denies, he said by phone on Wednesday.

Mr. Kervick said he was “obviously happy” with the ruling. “It was our position that the court had an obligation to ask whether or not anybody had read the article and depending on what their response was,” he added, “whether they could still be fair and impartial.”

A hospital lawyer, Catherine S. Nietzel, said she believed her client would appeal. She said she did not believe that the article had unfairly prejudiced the jury, because much of its content was admitted as evidence at trial.

Dr. Shander said she “absolutely” disagreed with the ruling, but declined further comment. A version of this article appeared in print on May 5, 2011, on page A28 of the New York edition with the headline: Jury Verdict for Hospital In Suicide Case Is Set Aside.