South Florida Personal Injury Lawyers

On Sept. 6, 2004, plaintiff Stacey Travlos, 38, a tax examiner, bowled at Coram Country Lanes, which is located at 615 Middle Country Road, in Coram. Travlos bowled for about an hour without incident, but she slipped during a subsequent approach to one of the facility’s lanes. She claimed that she sustained an injury of a wrist.

Travlos sued the alley’s owner, Coram Country Lanes, LLC. She alleged that Coram Country Lanes was negligent in its maintenance of the premises. She further alleged that Coram Country Lanes’ negligence created a dangerous condition.

Travlos claimed that her right foot slipped while she was releasing a bowling ball. She contended that she subsequently noticed blotches of oil on the floor of the approach area, and she claimed that it appeared as if someone had stepped on the blotched areas. She further claimed that she was merely drinking water that night and that she did not notice any of the bowling alley’s personnel performing maintenance. However, Travlos’ husband, who was present when the incident occurred, claimed that he had noticed that the lanes had been oiled and that an oiling machine was being operated on a nearby lane. Plaintiffs’ counsel contended that spots of oil leaked from the oiling machine onto the approach that Ms. Travlos and her husband were using.

The bowling alley’s general manager contended that the lanes were being oiled that night and that Ms. Travlos’ lane was probably oiled about two hours before she arrived. He claimed that the oiling machine oils the lanes and is pulled along the approaches to move the machine from lane to lane, but that the machine was only known to leak about once a month. He further claimed that if the machine were found to be dripping, he would have cleaned the area with the appropriate materials. The manager further claimed that he inspected the approach area after Travlos fell and did not observe any oil or other substance on the floor.

Defense counsel contended that Travlos simply lost her footing and stepped over the foul line onto the oiled area of the lane, causing her to slip and fall. He also presented an accident report describing this version of the accident. However, Travlos claimed that the report was created by an employee of the bowling alley. Defense counsel argued that the bowling alley did not create the alleged condition, nor did it have actual or constructive notice.

Travlos claimed that she suffers residual swelling of the wrist, residual pain and a residual reduction of the wrist’s range of motion. She contended that further treatment is necessary.

She sought recovery of her past and future medical expenses and damages for her past and future pain and suffering. Her husband presented a derivative claim.

Defense counsel disputed Ms. Travlos’ alleged residual injuries. He argued that X-rays taken of Travlos’ right wrist 10 months after the accident indicated no evidence of a fracture, a dislocation or skeletal abnormalities.

The jury rendered a defense verdict. It found that Coram Country Lanes was not liable for Travlos’ fall.

As authorities try to determine how many deaths nationwide may be linked to an alleged assisted suicide ring, members of the group known as the Final Exit Network are defending a mission they call “self-deliverance.”

The network’s president, its medical director and two other members were charged Wednesday in the death of John Celmer, a 58-year-old Georgia man who suffered for years from cancer of the throat and mouth. They each face up to five years in prison if convicted on assisted suicide charges.

Members bristle at the term assisted suicide, saying they don’t play an active role in a person’s death, but rather support and guide those who decide to end their lives on their own. Authorities say new members pay a $50 fee and are vetted through an application process.

Those seeking to end their lives are assigned a guide who instructs them to purchase two new helium tanks and a hood, known as an “exit bag.” Authorities say it’s consistent with the way Celmer died – suffocation due to inhalation.

When the member is ready, authorities said, he or she is visited by the exit guide and a senior exit guide to lead them through the process.

“We’re just there to help,” said Jerry Dincin, vice president of the 3,000-member Final Exit Network, who was not among those arrested. “People insist upon it. They want to do what they want to do. They’re suffering, and if they have intolerable pain, then they want to sometimes get out of that intolerable pain.”

Celmer’s mother, Betty, said he had undergone extensive surgery and had several more rounds to go. She contends group members shouldn’t face charges if they helped her son.

“If they helped John to die, that is what he wanted,” she said. “I would never find them guilty for helping him.”

The network is at the center of a wide-ranging investigation that led to raids in nine states this week.

It wasn’t immediately clear how many other deaths are being investigated. Authorities in Arizona said they were looking into whether the group helped a Phoenix woman die in April 2007.

Authorities there and in Georgia said search warrants were executed at 14 sites in Arizona, Georgia, Florida, Maryland, Michigan, Ohio, Missouri, Colorado, and Montana.

Group members Thomas E. Goodwin, identified as the organization’s president, and Claire Blehr were arrested Wednesday at a home in northern Georgia in connection with Celmer’s death in Cumming, about 35 miles north of Atlanta, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said. The arrests came after a sting operation in which an undercover agent posed as a member of the group.

The pair were scheduled to make a first court appearance Friday. Maryland authorities arrested the organization’s medical director, Dr. Lawrence D. Egbert, 81, of Baltimore, and Nicholas Alec Sheridan, a Baltimore man who is a regional coordinator for the group. They were scheduled for an extradition hearing Friday.

In addition to assisted suicide, the four were charged with tampering with evidence and a violation of Georgia’s anti-racketeering act.

In an interview, Dincin called the arrests “ridiculous” but acknowledged he could be next. He said network members are encouraged to order “The Final Exit,” a best-selling book that outlines how they can end their lives through “self-deliverance,” described as the practice of taking one’s own life to escape suffering.

“This method does not involve any other person directly, although a loved one or friend should ideally be present,” an excerpt read. “It is legal in all respects, and widely accepted ethically.”

But Georgia authorities say the group violated Georgia law, which defines assisted suicide as anyone publicly advertising or offering to “intentionally and actively assist another person.”

Dincin said his group will fight the charges in court.

“We just hold their hand,” he said. “We’re there for them for support – they read the information, they purchase the materials if that’s what they want to do.”

Police say a teenager who soaked her hair in gasoline to try to kill head lice was severely burned when the gas fumes ignited and set her head ablaze.

Eighteen-year-old Jessica Brooks was in serious condition Thursday at the burn unit at University Hospital in Louisville, Ky. She was burned Sunday night at her apartment in Evansville, Indiana

Police said Brooks was in her bathroom letting her hair soak in gasoline just before a pilot light from a water heater ignited the gas fumes and her hair.

Investigator Richard Howard said Brooks suffered second- and third-degree burns over more than half of her body.

Brooks was taking high school night classes in hopes of graduating this year.

Texting and making phone calls while driving are now becoming quite close to overcoming the root of all teenage driving accidents. The fact of the matter is that teenage drivers have yet to fully develop their driving skills to operate a vehicle while also operating and cell phone. To make matters worse texting while driving is a lot worse then making and receiving phone calls while driving. This is because when texting a teenager must constantly look down at their mobile device to select the desired contact, as well as monitor the message they are typing with their fingers. This not only diverts their attention from the road but it also has them constantly taking their eyes off of the road. For the past 20 years, underage alcoholic consumption has been the leading factor of teenage deaths in automobile accidents. However, texting and talking on the phone is making a close second with reason for growth. If you are a parent of a teenager you should stress the importance of not texting and receiving and making phone calls while driving. There are many different types of monitoring devices that will allow you to control the amount of texting your teenager has access to.

A teenager’s family is filing a wrongful death suit against the city of Greenwood, the Police Department of Greenwood, officers Eric McElhaney and Jay Arnold, as well as the Greenwood police chief and mayor. The plaintiff’s are filing an excessive force claim as well as illegally pursuing and stopping the vehicle in which Kyle Collins was in the passenger seat. “In attempting to apprehend Collins, Officers Arnold and McElhaney utilized excessive force in that they battered and beat Collins and shot him at least 15 times to the back of the head, buttocks, arms, face and other parts of his body directly causing his death,” the suit alleges. However, the Johnson County prosecutor deemed the police officers actions permissible. There was much of a struggle as McElhaney and Arnold pulled over the vehicle for speeding. When the police officers approached the vehicle they found brass knuckles in the car and attempted to detain Collins. That is when the struggle occurred and the shots started. Collins fired about seven shots; McElhaney fired 10, and Arnold 12. All parties were hit and including both officers.

Three knee implant recipients have no standing to sue to recover insurance copayments they say were artificially inflated by kickbacks the manufacturers paid to doctors, a New Jersey federal judge has ruled.

U.S. District Judge William Martini granted the defendant companies’ motions to dismiss, saying the plaintiffs lack individual rights to sue under federal racketeering law because they were not the direct purchasers of the replacement joints.

Lyle Hale, Cliff Reublin and Stephen Wilcox, all Iowa residents, filed their proposed class action last year against Stryker Orthopaedics and Smith & Nephew Inc. in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey.

Stryker Orthopaedics is based in New Jersey, and Smith & Nephew has its headquarters in Tennessee.

The plaintiffs claimed their coinsurance payments for their implant surgeries were fraudulently inflated through the defendants’ policies of forging phony consulting agreements with orthopedic surgeons.

Under the arrangements the surgeons were paid for their “consulting services,” a thinly veiled premise to favor use of the defendants’ artificial knee and hip joints in their patients.

The costs of the scheme, the plaintiffs said, was added to the price of each company’s medical devices, which, in turn, increased the costs passed to consumers through insurers and Medicare plans.

Without the shady promotional tactics, the plaintiffs alleged, their copayments would have been much lower.

The men filed their suit after the companies entered settlement agreements with the U.S. Justice Department following an investigation into the practices.

Stryker and Smith & Nephew moved to dismiss, citing the plaintiffs’ lack of individual standing under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act because they were not the direct buyers of the medical devices at issue.

Judge Martini granted the motions, citing a relevant ruling on the authority of only “direct purchasers” to bring RICO claims in McCarthy v. Recordex Service, 80 F.3d 842 (3d Cir. 1996).

“While plaintiffs argue that they have pled direct injury since they paid artificially-inflated coinsurance payments for their surgeries, plaintiffs have not alleged that they were direct purchasers of the replacement joints,” the judge said. “Between plaintiffs and defendants in the chain of distribution stand several actors, including the hospitals performing the joint surgeries and plaintiffs’ insurers.”

Applying Iowa law to settle the parties’ choice-of-law dispute, the judge also dismissed the plaintiffs’ state consumer law claims, saying no private right of action exists under the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act.

Judge Martini also used the law of New Jersey, as the forum state, to dismiss the plaintiffs’ unjust-enrichment claim.

He said the plaintiffs had failed to meet New Jersey’s requirement that they show that the defendants had “received a benefit and that the retention of that benefit without payment would be unjust.”

“Plaintiffs have not pled that Stryker or Smith & Nephew benefited from the coinsurance payments made by plaintiffs to their insurers. Plaintiffs simply represent that they made these payments to their insurers,” the judge said.

“While plaintiffs are correct that those coinsurance payments are to their detriment, the payments are not a detriment accruing to defendants’ benefit,” he said. “Accordingly, they cannot be the foundation of an unjust-enrichment claim.”

A former asbestos products distributor is taking on people it accuses of producing false medical screening results in asbestos-related-injury suits by filing a racketeering and fraud action in Mississippi state court.

Since 1995 the defendants have generated “false medical test results, false medical reports and false diagnoses [in] tens of thousands of personal injury cases,” according to the complaint, filed in the Holmes County Circuit Court.

Plaintiff National Services Industries Inc., formerly known as North Brothers Inc., says the defendants have conducted mass screenings of people suspected of having occupational exposure to asbestos in products once distributed by North Brothers.

According to the complaint, the defendants engaged in this scheme to make it appear that individuals had asbestos-related diseases and thereby fraudulently extract money from NSI.

NSI’s claim for violation of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1961, alleges the defendants defrauded it of millions of dollars.

The defendants are N&M Inc., which conducted the screenings; its co-owners Charlie Mason and Molly Netherland; Christopher Taylor, an N&M employee; and Drs. Ray and Andrew Harron, a father-and-son medical team that read the disputed X-rays.

Ray Harron routinely diagnosed asbestos-related diseases or silicosis without ruling out other possible causes that could have been found if he had used “sound diagnostic requirements,” the complaint says.

The defendants’ activities included “systematic, deliberate and reckless departures from accepted medical standards in the evaluation and diagnosis of asbestos-related diseases,” according to the complaint.

The lawsuit says N&M spent more than $1.5 million to solicit law firms around the country to represent their screened claimants.

NSI adds that the individuals who took health histories from claimants had no medical training.

When claimants arrived at mobile screening stations, which often were parked in front of motels or in restaurant parking lots, the defendants would perform X-rays that were not prescribed by any doctor, sometimes in violation of state law, the suit says.

NSI is requesting an award of its actual damages and triple that amount in accordance with RICO.

Pediatrician Natalie Hodge spent seven years in a hectic doctor’s office. Some days, she’d see 40 sick kids, 10 minutes at a time. Moms calling for advice about sore throats or ear aches had to wait. Hodge could only find time to return those calls as she drove home

Finally, she had enough.

“I kind of threw up my hands and said, ‘There’s got to be a better way to do this,’” Hodge said. “I said, ‘I’m going to get a laptop and a Treo and make house calls.’”

For much of America’s history, that was the norm. Home visits died when medical insurance replaced pay-as-you-go, and administrative costs and malpractice insurance fees forced doctors to abandon individual practices and join together in groups. By the early 1970s, fewer than 1 percent of doctors made house calls.

Now, doctors visiting the sick in their homes seems to be in vogue again. The doctor still carries a little black bag, but a laptop bag, too, and perhaps a portable X-ray machine.

Experts say the number of doctors checking patients at home, while still a very small percentage of all doctors, has risen sharply since a Medicare policy change a decade ago that increased reimbursement for home visits. But that change mostly involved house calls to the homebound.

The American Academy of Home Care Physicians doesn’t track how many doctors make house calls, executive director Constance Row said. Neither does the American Medical Association.

Private and public medical insurance typically doesn’t pay for “concierge” services like Hodge’s – that is, house calls borne out of convenience, not necessity. In fact, Hodge’s clients typically pay a $1,500 annual out-of-pocket fee plus a charge for every visit.

Dr. Steven Landers, medical director for home health care at Cleveland Clinic, said house calls can mean better patient care.

“The real benefit is the access,” said Landers, who makes about 20 house calls per week to geriatric and chronically ill patients. “You get to see people in their own environment. You learn things you wouldn’t normally know.”

Row said too many frail and elderly people skip seeing the doctor simply because it is too difficult to make the trip to the office. For them, she said, home visits are essential.

“This is one of these areas where the need has outstripped the capacity,” Row said. “There are more people who need the service than there are physicians who provide it.”

House calls today are made easier by advances in technology. Hodge said that for most visits, she needs little more than her iPhone, a laptop and a high-tech cooling system for medicine. Landers checks a patient’s chart and schedules the next appointment on the laptop he carries with him.

Mobile technology means doctors can perform blood tests and X-rays inside a patient’s home. Digital photos can be e-mailed to specialists. New data storage systems keep all the information safe.

Hodge, 39, was a University of Kentucky medical student doing a stint in Hazard, Ky., when she got her first taste of house calls. “I would drive up into little hollers, taking care of guys who wouldn’t come into the clinic, coal miners,” she said.

She did her pediatrics residency at Washington University in St. Louis, then began working in a multi-specialty office here. By 2005, she grew weary of what she found to be impersonal, inadequate care.

So she launched her house call practice, Personal Pediatrics. She started a Web site and the business took off. It was so successful she plans to expand nationally. And as the business expands, Hodge hopes to partner with a charitable foundation that could offset the annual fee, making the service available to a broader audience.

The benefit is convenience. No more phone tag with the doctor’s office, no more dragging a sick kid out of bed. When parents have a question, they call or e-mail Hodge directly.

On a recent chilly morning, Hodge visited 7-year-old Elizabeth Cupini, who stayed home from school with a sore throat, sneezing and coughing.

Snug in a pink bed decorated with Teddy bears, Elizabeth opened wide as Hodge used a small flashlight to examine her throat.

“Well, you have a pulse so I think you’re going to live,” the doctor said as the girl giggled. Nothing worse than a bad cold, the doctor told Elizabeth and her mom.

The bottom line, Hodge said, is that house calls make for better care.

“If they have asthma, you can say, ‘get rid of this carpet or these drapes.’ If they’re overweight or diabetic, you can see what’s in the fridge or the candy jar,” she said.

It’s that sort of connection that Landers said is simply lacking in the current health care system.

“The real power is the basic things that made the house call useful 50 years ago,” he said. “The patients and families find it to be a very caring gesture. Sometimes just showing that you care is the most important thing.”

A South Florida woman is charged with attempted murder after a Miami-Dade police officer was nearly dragged to death, police said.

Investigators said 18-year-old Angelina Brewton drove to pick up a friend who was involved in a car accident Wednesday near Northwest 127th Street and 22nd Avenue.

When she tried to drive-off, authorities said an officer tried to stop them but got caught inside the passenger window and was dragged for nearly eight blocks. He suffered cuts and bruises.

Brewton was later arrested and is being held without bond

In July 2003, plaintiff Susan Haywood, 33, a mountain biker, earned 15 points in a race in Sandpoint, Idaho.

Haywood was accumulating points in pursuit of earning a spot on the 2004 U.S. Olympic mountain biking team, and the points were then to be submitted by USA Cycling Inc. to the International Cycling Union by Dec. 31, 2003.

With the 15 points earned, Haywood assumed that she was on her way to the Athens games until she discovered that USA Cycling failed to submit the 15 points from the July 2003 race to the union. Mary McConneloug, who was vying against Haywood for the Olympic spot, filed suit and was eventually chosen by an arbitrator to compete in Athens.

Haywood sued USA Cycling, asserting negligence for their clerical error. Plaintiff’s counsel argued that the defendant received a reminder from the union in October 2003 about submitting the results from the Sandpoint race; however, USA Cycling failed to do so.

The defendant denied the allegations, contending that it was not the responsibility of USA Cycling to submit the points to the union, rather the technical representative of the international sanctioning bylaws.

Haywood sought $18,847.14 in court costs for the arbitration against McConneloug and races (Spain, Scotland, Austria, Cyprus) that she competed in an effort qualify for the Olympic games.

The plaintiff said that she was devastated by USA Cycling’s negligence which precluded her from competing in the Olympics, an aspiration that she worked toward since college that caused her to put other areas in her life (i.e., starting a family) on hold. She sought an unspecified amount for past and future emotional distress.

The jury found in favor of Haywood and against USA Cycling, awarding the plaintiff $318,847.14.

Susan Haywood

$18,847 Personal Injury: special damages

$60,000 Personal Injury: annoyance and inconvenience up to date of trial

$240,000 Personal Injury: emotional distress, humiliation, embarrassment and/or loss of personal dignity up to date of trial