An investigation is underway to determine whether or not MicroMedCardiovascular, maker of pediatric heart pumps, should have reported the death of a recipient of the pump. The FDA-approved pump, called DeBakey VAD Child Device was designed by Michael DeBakey, a well-known surgeon, and is the only pump of its kind. The manufacturer is required to report any deaths related to and/or caused by the device within 30 days.

The I-Flow Corporation, manufacturers of the pain pumps that have come under legal scrutiny, filed a motion for a new trial with Multnomah County on February 19, 2010. This comes on the heels of the January 22, 2010, verdict against the I-Flow Corporation. In that trial, lead attorney John Coletti won a $5.4 million verdict for his clients, Matt & Krista Beale.

In the late 1990s it became popular among surgeons to insert the pain pumps directly into the joints following shoulder surgery. Unfortunately, many patients developed chondrolysis, a debilitating and irreversible degeneration of the joint cartilage. Hundreds of lawsuits against the pain pump manufacturers, including I-Flow Corporation and McKinley Medical, are underway, and in November 2009 the FDA issued a warning to the medical community to stop using pain pumps in joints.

You know that Hasbro board game Operation? It always sort of gave me the creeps. There just seemed to be something so wrong about fishing out little objects left in the “patient.” But, it’s a game. Unfortunately, there have been many real-life cases of foreign objects being left in patients during surgery, enough that a company has designed and manufactured a device to locate such foreign remnants.

Nurse Anne Mitchell thought she was doing the right thing when she contacted the Texas state medical board to report what she believed to be medical malpractice on the part of Dr. Rolando G. Arafiles, Jr. Mitchell was not only fired by Winkler County Memorial Hospital, where she had worked for 25 years, but she was also slapped with a third-degree felony charge for “misuse of official information.”

In September 2008 a sand-rail accident at Sand Lake Dunes Recreational Area near Tillamook, OR, left two dead and others seriously injured. A sand rail is a sort of dune buggy designed to go fast on sand. The accident was caused by David Rieman, who crashed his sand rail head-on into another sand rail, killing the other driver and a passenger and injuring the other two passengers. At the time of the accident, Rieman’s blood-alcohol content was 0.27 percent (the legal limit is .08 percent).

There once was a liability cap in Oregon of $200,000 for public agencies, including the Oregon Health Sciences University (OHSU). The cap was increased last year to $1.5 million. Caught in the middle of the liability cap reform was Ken Ackerman, a former television host and current realtor, who had sued neurosurgeon Dr. Alex West of OHSU for negligence after a 2003 surgery caused permanent damage.

Ackerman won his lawsuit in 2006, but the amount of his award was in question–did it fall under the old liability cap of $200,000 or the new cap? The jury awarded Ackerman more than $1.4 million, $1 million in noneconomic damages and another $412,000 for economic losses. His lawsuit had asked for $5 million in damages.

The number of people affected by chondrolysis (degeneration of the joint cartilage) because of pain pumps is notable and has led to hundreds of lawsuits, including the one successfully led by John Coletti. The recent New York Times’ article chronicling the saga notes the controversy surrounding the pain pumps and whether or not pain pumps are indeed directly responsible for chondrolysis.

I was searching around for interesting articles to blog about when I came across an article by Joanne Doroshow on the Huffington Post blog called “This Week in Horrific Medical Negligence News.” She highlights a number of news stories and lawsuits across the country that display, well, horrific medical negligence. She puts it much better than I ever could. To read the article, click here.

Back in September, we blogged about a former Toyota attorney who filed a lawsuit against Toyota, claiming that he was told to squelch evidence regarding a number of rollover cases. The attorney, Dimitrios Biller, had worked as head of Toyota’s rollover litigation group for just under five years. Biller stated that Toyota destroyed or hid evidence in some 300 cases and in October provided documents to a federal courtroom that allegedly support his claims. If Biller wins his lawsuit, many rollover cases may be reopened.

And another one for the “practically unbelievable” files! An Ohio daycare center, church affiliated, no less, allegedly “quieted” some of the children by drugging them with doses of the supplement melatonin, which is often used as a sleep aid. As you can imagine, some parents have filed a lawsuit against the daycare center and its owner, the Springfield Township’s Covenant Apostolic Church.