South Florida Personal Injury Lawyers

-Toby Keith, his mother and his siblings have been awarded US$2.8 million in damages in the 2001 collision that killed the country music star’s father.A jury returned the verdict against Elias Rodriguez and Pedro Rodriguez, operators of Rodriguez Transportes of Tulsa, and the Republic Western Insurance Co.

According to evidence presented at trial, a charter bus owned by the Rodriguezes was “in urgent need” of brake repairs before H.K. Covel was killed in the March 2001 accident on Interstate 35, said attorney Greg Dixon, who represented Keith’s family.

The Rodriguezes had been advised of the brake problem before Covel’s truck crossed the center median and struck the bus, he said.

The family initially suspected Covel suffered a medical condition that caused the truck to veer out of control. It later learned another vehicle had bumped the truck and filed a wrongful death lawsuit to clear Covel’s name, Dixon said.

The verdict was returned last week. “The jury found no fault on the part of Mr. Covel in the wreck that claimed his life,” Dixon said.

The plaintiffs, wife Carolyn Covel, daughter Tonni Covel and sons Toby Keith Covel and Tracey Covel, alleged that H.K. Covel would not have died if the bus had been equipped with properly working air brakes.

The Food and Drug Administration issued another warning for the Duragesic and other fentanyl-containing pain patches, which have been associated with hundreds of accidental deaths.

In the new warning, the agency said patients and doctors often fail to understand the special risks associated with fentanyl patches, including the risk of potentially fatal overdose.

Not Like a Pill

“It’s a unique problem with the patches because of…the way that the drug is delivered to the body and the way that it’s metabolized. It’s complicated by the patch formula,” said Dr. Bob Rappaport of the FDA.

The patches are designed to deliver a steady dose of fentanyl, an extremely potent painkiller, into the body over several days. However, the patches contain a much higher dose of fentanyl than individual pills, and heat may increase the rate at which the drug is released into the skin.

2005 FDA Warning

In 2005, the FDA issued an alert about the risks of accidental overdose associated with fentanyl patches, but safety advocates say the advisory was insufficient and some say the agency still hasn’t gone far enough.

“I think there is more that needs to be done, or else we’re just going to see this [warning] happen again another two years from now. The deaths are going to continue,” said Michael Cohen, president of the Institute for Safe Medication Practices.

A Dangerous Drug

Last year, a study cited more than 3,500 deaths possibly linked to fentanyl, in all its forms, between 1998 and 2005. According to lead author Thomas J. Moore, “the patch was by far the largest contributor.”

Fentanyl patches are sold by various pharmaceutical companies. Duragesic is the brand name of the first fentanyl pain patch introduced to the market in 1990. The patches are intended for treatment of severe chronic pain in cancer patients, but are sometimes used for off-label purposes.

A jury in Massachusetts awarded more than $6 million in damages to the family of a man killed during a bizarre bus accident at Gillette Stadium in August 2003.

Thomas Kelly, 64, sustained severe injuries when a steel gate crashed through the windshield of the shuttle bus taking him and a group of other passengers back to the stadium after a golf tournament. He died several days after the accident.

According to reports, passengers were pinned inside the bus for an hour and three of the passengers had to be airlifted to a local hospital. One woman had to have a below-the-knee amputation on one of her legs because of the injuries she sustained.

Passengers File Claims
A number of the injured passengers filed claims, and some of those have already settled out of court. Kelly’s wrongful death case went to trial, and a jury found Foxboro Realty, which owns the stadium, and a couple of companies that worked for Foxboro guilty of negligence.

Kelly’s widow was awarded $1.82 million and each of his two sons $1.4 million. The total award comes to just over $6 million when interest, medical and other costs are added.

The 91st richest man in the United States, a roofing company billionaire, died after falling through his garage’s roof, local authorities said Friday.Ken Hendricks, 66, was checking on construction of the roof at his home Thursday night when he fell through, Rock County Sheriff’s Department commander Troy Knudson said. He suffered massive head injuries, according to his company, ABC Supply Co.

Hendricks was pronounced dead at an Illinois hospital early Friday morning, Winnebago County coroner Sue Fiduccia said. An autopsy is planned for Friday.

Hendricks was the founder, chairman and chief executive officer of his company, the self-described largest wholesale distributor of roofing in the U.S. The company does about $3 billion (€2 billion) in business a year.

Hendricks had a net worth of $3.5 billion (€2 billion) in September, according to Forbes magazine. That made him the 91st richest person in the U.S., according to the magazine’s ranking of American billionaires.

But he seemed unfazed by his wealth.

“It doesn’t make any difference to me; I can’t spend it,” Hendricks said in an interview with Inc.com in September 2006. “I’d have to sell the company, and I’ll sell the company over my dead body.”

Hendricks, the son of a roofer, worked side-by-side with his father growing up. A high school dropout, he started his own roofing business at age 21, according to his biography on ABC Supply’s Web site.

Tired of having to deal with multiple suppliers scattered around the country, he and his wife, Diane, started a national supply distribution chain in 1982.

The company celebrated its 25th anniversary this year, with 6,000 employees in 390 locations nationwide.

“This is an enormous tragedy and a great loss to the family, associates and the community,” ABC Supply said in a statement.

The couple had seven children, according to their biographies.

 60-year-old man is taking an 8-year-old boy and his dad to court, claiming the boy caused a ski-slope collision that left the older man with a shoulder injury.

David J. Pfahler of Allentown, Pa., sued in federal court in Denver, claiming Scott Swimm, then 7, was skiing fast and recklessly when they collided in January, the Vail Daily reported Thursday.

The suit claims Pfahler suffered a torn shoulder tendon and seeks compensation for physical therapy, vacation time, nursing and medical services provided by Pfahler’s wife, and other expenses. It estimates the couple’s losses at more than $75,000.

Scott’s father, Robb Swimm, said that he saw the crash and that Scott was skiing slowly and in control.

“It wasn’t a violent collision or anything; Scott just kind of tapped his ski boots,” he said this week.

Scott’s mother, Susan Swimm, said her son weighs 48 pounds and couldn’t have been going more than 10 mph.

“Who in the world sues a child?” she said. “It just boggles my mind every day.”

Pfahler’s Denver attorney, Jim Chalat, declined to comment on specifics but says Pfahler, who works for Reader’s Digest, wants to go back to work.

The family of an Illinois man who died from asbestos-related mesothelioma was awarded $2.6 million in damages on Wednesday. The jury deliberated for only about four hours before delivering the multimillion-dollar verdict.

John Watkins worked at Union Asbestos & Rubber Co. (later Unarco Industries Inc.) in Bloomington for two summers in 1962 and 1963. During that time he was exposed to asbestos but was not warned of the dangers, according to the lawsuit.

In September 2005, Watkins died from mesothelioma—a fatal cancer linked to asbestos exposure.

Watkins’ widow and son filed a lawsuit against one of the companies that owned the asbestos plant, Honeywell International Inc., and the jury found the company guilty of conspiring to “suppress information about the hazards of asbestos.”

The family of a 14-year-old boy who was bitten by a police dog is preparing to sue the city of Bakersfield.

Miguel Perez was laying in bed, covered by blankets when officers came to his house late Monday night, looking for his older brothers and their friend. The men were suspects in an armed robbery.

According to police, a miscommunication with the family led officers to believe the house was empty when they went in with the police dog. While inside, the dog attacked the boy while he was laying on his bed, covered by blankets. The boy suffered cuts on his face and head and a puncture wound below his eyebrow. He was taken to Kern Medical Center where he underwent surgery and was released on Tuesday.

The family has now hired an attorney and has begun the process of filing a lawsuit against the city.

A former Pfizer Inc. official in a lawsuit accused the company of illegally boosting sales of its top-selling drug Lipitor through an elaborate campaign of misleading educational programs for doctors.

Jesse Polansky, claims that the educational campaign was a key part of a marketing strategy that “led thousands of physicians to prescribe Lipitor for millions of patients who did not need medication” and could be harmed by overly aggressive treatment.

The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York in February 2004. It was immediately sealed to allow federal prosecutors time to decide if they wanted to intervene in the case. In August, the government said it wouldn’t intervene, lifting the seal. Pfizer was served a copy of the suit yesterday, according to Dr. Polansky’s lawyer, Steve Berman of Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro.

The failure of the government to intervene may signal that prosecutors are skeptical about the merits of the case. The government hasn’t intervened in other cases which led to huge fines against drug companies. One example is another case involving Pfizer, this one for the off-label marketing of Neurontin.

Pfizer said, “We believe this case has no merit. Furthermore, after reviewing the allegations in this complaint, the government declined to intervene in this action… . Pfizer does not condone the off-label promotion of our products. We believe that our sales and marketing practices are solely based on our prescription information as approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.”

Dr. Polansky was Pfizer’s director of outcomes management strategies from 2001 to 2003, and his responsibilities included reviewing some of the marketing materials for Lipitor and other Pifzer products. He says he was fired by Pfizer after complaining about marketing he considered to be improper. Dr. Polansky now works as the senior medical officer for Medicare in a unit that investigates fraud and abuse at the big government health insurer.

The suit seeks compensation for Dr. Polansky as a whistleblower under laws that could give him a share of money recovered for any overpayments made by federal health-insurance programs.

Lipitor, a type of cholesterol treatment known as a statin, is the world’s biggest-selling drug , with sales of $13.6 billion last year, according to IMS Health.

The allegations against Pfizer echo concern elsewhere that continuing medical-education programs for doctors are often sales pitches for “off-label” uses of drugs. A congressional committee this past summer said it was concerned there was little oversight of these programs — where doctors are often wined and dined — or enforcement when companies use them as marketing tools.

Pharmaceutical companies are prohibited from marketing drugs for indications other than what the FDA approves them for, although doctors aren’t prohibited from prescribing them for unapproved uses. Independent educational programs can discuss off-label uses that aren’t FDA approved. But Dr. Polansky’s lawsuit charges that the Pfizer-funded programs weren’t independent.

The Lipitor educational programs were run by companies paid by Pfizer through “unrestricted educational grants,” the lawsuit says. It alleges that the educational programs were integrated into the marketing plan for the drug, citing an internal Pfizer marketing plan for Lipitor with a page titled “Medical Education Platform Supports the New Positioning.”

Among other things, Dr. Polansky says Pfizer wanted to extend Lipitor use beyond the indications found on the drug’s label by targeting people at moderate risk of developing heart disease or having a heart attack. He said the educational programs for doctors deliberately misrepresented the drug’s label to encourage Lipitor therapy for people in the moderate-risk category who didn’t need the drug.

In his suit, Dr. Polansky also said the Pfizer programs included deliberate misinformation promoting the idea that kidney-disease patients may need to be treated with statins. While kidney disease is recognized by some doctors as a risk for heart disease, it isn’t part of the federal guidelines that factor into Lipitor’s approved use.

More than three dozen people in Texas and Illinois have fallen ill with blood infections caused by tainted medical syringes. No deaths have been reported, though one patient remained hospitalized on Tuesday.

Single Batch Affected
The syringes contain the blood thinning drug heparin and are used to clear out intravenous tubes and catheters in patients with cancer and other illnesses. Federal health officials said the contaminated syringes come from a single batch made by Sierra Pre-Filled.

Dushyant Patel, president of the company, said the tainted batch has been recalled. He also said that the company is cooperating with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration during the investigation.

Alerting the Public
The CDC is currently working to alert physicians, but is also urging patients who think they’ve used a tainted syringe to contact their doctors immediately. The blood infections can be serious, causing fever and chills, but usually respond to treatment with antibiotics.

Batches of the contaminated syringes have also been sent to Florida, Colorado and Pennsylvania, but no cases of infection have been reported in those states.

Investigators are still trying to determine the source of the contamination and where the liability lays, whether it was the heparin, the syringes, or the saline used for dilution.

The 90-year-old mother of a NASA astronaut aboard the international space station died Wednesday when a train struck her vehicle, police said.

A preliminary investigation showed that Rose Tani, the mother of astronaut Daniel M. Tani, stopped behind a school bus pausing at a train crossing, Raymond Byrne, police chief in this Chicago suburb, said in a statement. She drove around the bus, bypassing the lowered crossing gate, he said.

The train struck Tani’s vehicle on the passenger side and pushed it down the tracks before stopping. Paramedics took Tani to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

“All indications are that the crossing gates and warning signals were functioning properly at the time of the accident,” Byrne said.

Daniel Tani, 46, has made several journeys into space. He was a flight engineer on the Space Shuttle Discovery when it took off on Oct. 23 and was scheduled to remain on the space station until Jan. 8.

Tani and another astronaut ventured out of the space station Tuesday to inspect two defective mechanisms hobbling power generation.

NASA officials did not immediately return a telephone message left after business hours Wednesday.