Now a jury has convicted Dr. Conrad Murray of manslaughter for his role in Jackson’s death. Though Murray’s responsibilities to protect his patient were common to all doctors and all patients, his responsibility as Jackson’s personal doctor was virtually unique. Murray had only one patient, whose concert agency paid him $150,000 a month to keep the singer healthy.

Run of the mill medical malpractice occurs when a doctor violates essential patient safety rules, thus causing harm to a patient. But this case is more sordid.Dr. Murray was guilty not just of breaking rules, but of a fundamental, andeventually deadly, conflict of interest. Perhaps seduced by his enormous monthly salary, Murray abandoned his medical judgment and allowed his famous patient to cajole him into dangerous behavior with extremely powerful prescription drugs. Had he resisted the temptation like any ethical, responsible physician should have, Jackson presumably would have located some other doctor with more pliable morals. It may not have saved Jackson’s life, but at least his untimely death would be on someone else’s hands and Murray would not be facing prison and being stripped of his medical license.

While this is a particularly egregious and uniquely high profile example, conflicts of interest are common in medicine. Usually, instead of a high power client, it’s a doctor’s relationship with drug and device manufacturersthat lead to unnecessary surgery or advocating drugs, surgical devices and other treatments based on something besides the best interests of the patient.

Patrick Malone is a medical malpractice attorney who blogs about medical malpractice in Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia for PatrickMalone & Associates.

However, the jury is still out on whether the medical evidence points to causation, meaning the drugs directly increase the likelihood of autism, or correlation, which would mean women who exhibit symptoms of depression, and are therefore prescribed SSRIs, are more likely to give birth to children with a disorder on the autism spectrum. Said one of the landmark study’s authors, Dr. Lisa Croen, “we can’t detect causality from one study.”

What we know is that SSRIs affect the level of serotonin in the brain, and abnormal levels of serotonin are an important symptom of children with autism.

While it is not entirely conclusive, the Kaiser Permanente study is just one of many that have pursued a link between pregnant women taking SSRIs and various birth defects. The authors of this particular study were interested in SSRIs and autism because of the role that serotonin appears to play in the disorder. The fact that children whose mothers took SSRIs during the first trimester of pregnancy were four times more likely to develop a disorder on the autism spectrum is consistent with the theory that taking SSRI’s while pregnant is responsible for higher autism rates.

Still, a variety of environmental factors, including the mother’s own natural serotonin levels, are believed by many to be the primary factor in the development of autism in children.

Even though not all the evidence is concrete, many lawsuits have been filed over the years alleging drug companies failed to warn doctors about the risks SSRIs pose to pregnant women and their children. GJEL has fielded and continues to field such suits for California residents whose pregnancies have been negatively impacted by taking SSRIs.

We welcome your inquiries, and will deliver more information about the link between autism and SSRIs like Paxil and Zoloft as it becomes available.

Photo Credit: Be.Futureproof

Butler would hire an attractive woman to go to a bar where she could approach the man who was in the process of getting a divorce from one of Butler’s clients. After starting a conversation, flirting, and sharing drinks, the woman would suggest that the target follow her in his car to her place.

On the way, he would be intercepted by police officers on the take from Butler, who would claim the man had been swerving and charge him with a DUI.

The DUI arrest gave Butler’s clients leverage in the court room, in one instance a woman successfully used it to prove that her ex-husband was unfit to see their children without supervision.

That, of course, is entrapment. And a particularly cruel form of it that shames its victims with the social stigma of a DUI while also taking away access to the victim’s children—all the victim’s lowest point.

In order to make it work, Butler enlisted the support of the San Ramon and Danville police departments and the state narcotics task force. Charges also allege that Butler sold drugs for law enforcement officers and assisted them in opening and operating a brothel.

In all his foul deeds, Butler managed not only to fool local courts, but the national media. His business, which touted its “gumshoe housewives” was highlighted in People magazine and on Dr. Phil.

Butler believed he was protected because any improprieties would be investigated by the state narcotics task force, a divisions in which Butler had high ranking friends. But when the FBI got involved in early 2011, things quickly fell apart.

Still, the matter of the DUIs remain. These victims, despite the circumstances, were drinking and driving. And though one could easily argue they learned through their ordeals, should they really have the charges dismissed?

The answer is yes, according to a rarely cited 19th century law that makes it a felony to conspire to subject another person to arrest.

The charges may be dropped, but the divorce verdicts, many of which favored victims now ex-wives, stand. Divorce proceedings are personal and can turn bitter, opening up old wounds with this new information, is unlikely to make anyone feel they’ve received justice, at least in the short term.

Photo Credit: Alex E. Proimos

Unfortunately, Mr. Tindall was not the first victim of the 2008 Marsh Creek Road resurfacing project. Just five days earlier, a woman died when she skidded off the road and into a tree.  Evidence was presented that, during three separate resurfacing projects since 1994, fifteen serious accidents had occurred, including the last, the one that killed Mr. Tindall.

Mr. Tindall, a long-time East Bay resident, was on his way to a plumbing job at a local hospital when he stopped to assist a driver who had overturned his SUV after losing control on a gravel-covered curve. Only moments later, a second car struck and killed him, when its driver lost control on the same patch of road.

Luke Ellis of this firm represented the Tindalls in their lawsuit against the County and the California Highway Patrol. The jury awarded $1.5 million in economic damages, and $10.2 million to his widow and daughter (now age 13) for their loss of his love, care and companionship.  Mr. Ellis commented on the verdict: “Mr. Tindall was a wonderful man, someone who stopped coming from an opposite direction to help a stranger in distress.  The damages awarded were very fair and reasonable based on the extremely close relationship Mr. Tindall had with his wife and daughter, and we appreciate all the time, care and attention spent by the jury on this case.”

The 510(k) process, the report notes, raises serious questions about an agency that has approved devices that require revision surgeries and are recalled much more frequently than normal. “The 510(k) process generally is not intended to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of medical devices and, furthermore, cannot be transformed into a premarket evaluation of safety and effectiveness,” the Institute of Medicine authors wrote in a letter to the FDA.

The report was particularly tough on dangerous medical devices that have already been recalled, like DePuy’s line of ASR metal-on-metal hip implants, which “appeared to work well when tested only on mechanical simulators but then failed disastrously when implanted in patients,” reports the New York Times. The relatively large number of revision surgeries has led to hundreds of DePuy hip implant lawsuits here in California and across the country. Since, the FDA’s abbreviated approval process has been in the line of fire thanks to journalists, doctors, and safety advocates.

But despite the growing consensus that DePuy’s metal-on-metal hip implant models were faulty and approved thanks to the shortened process the Institute of Medicine criticizes, the report was immediately met with opposition from the pharmaceutical industry and Washington lobbyists. A full month before the report was released, the pro-business Washington Legal Foundation petitioned the FDA to disregard the results due to the panel’s bias against the medical device industry. The American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons quickly congratulated the organization for “taking the bull by the horns” to discredit the Institute of Medicine study, reports the Times.

Others have come to the defense of the Institute of Medicine report and its authors. “I think it would be difficult to find a more reputable scientific organization than the Institute of Medicine,” said Dr. William Maisel, the FDA’s chief scientist overseeing medical devices. Although the FDA is not required to accept the report’s finding, Dr. Maisel’s faith in the Institute of Medicine suggests that the agency will at least take the claims seriously, which could potentially lead to stricter rules regulating the approval of medical devices here in the United States.

Contentious debate aside, the most important aspect of this discussion is the patients who may be suffering serious pain and metal poisoning due to DePuy’s faulty hip implants. If you or a loved one received a DePuy artificial hip, consider contacting your doctor to check if your model could require a revision surgery. We’ll keep you updated on FDA developments as they progress.

Mercury News reporter Steve Johnson notes that many government officials don’t even know the specific location of some of these hazardous pipelines. The Department of Transportation reports that these pipelines led to 71 “significant” accidents between 2005 and 2009, but another study by the group Common Ground Alliance puts the number closer to 320 excavation problems in 2009 alone. These types of accidents, on a larger scale, can lead to deaths and injuries as serious as the past San Bruno and Walnut Creek explosions.

Following the San Bruno pipeline explosion, the fire marshal wrote in a May report that many state fire departments “had outdated maps and old contact lists” and did not provide local officials with maps of their liquid pipelines, despite a 1988 federal law that required them to do so. To solve this problem, fire marshal division chief Bob Gorham notes that the state of California could set up an online map of pipelines for emergency officials. The National Pipeline Mapping System also provides information on the location of many liquid pipes across the country.

Check out the map to see if one of these dangerous pipelines is in your back yard. But maps aside, to seriously reduce the risk of future California pipeline explosions, owners and government officials must abide by safety regulations and take additional steps to assure that the pipelines don’t tread too near to potential dig sites or important sites like hospitals and schools.

Photo credit: Rennett Stowe

Judge Lichtman’s powerful ruling detailed the haunting 2008 train accident and the “Sophie’s Choice” the Court was forced to make by taking funds away from one family to give them to another. This process “boiled down to triage,” he wrote. “This Court was forced to do precisely what the first responders did on the day of the accident. It had to categorize the injuries and victims and make the awards on the basis of what the future would hold for many of the families and victims.” Following an accident that robbed families of children or parents, and left even more with irreparable injuries, these decisions could be nothing short of impossible.

Writing for The Atlantic, CBS News legal editor Andrew Cohen explains that the Court was limited to $200 million in damages due to the 1997 Amtrak Reform and Accountability Act, which stipulated that “the aggregate allowable awards to all rail passengers, against all defendants, for all crimes, including claims for punitive damages, arising from a single accident or incident, shall not exceed $200,000,000.” While this is certainly a lot of money, it falls far short when a “single accident” causes dozens of wrongful deaths and catastrophic injuries. In this case, Judge Lichtman predicted that the funds awarded to victims would have exceeded $350 million if it weren’t for the 1997 law. Read Judge Lichtman’s full opinion here.

Cohen worries that this is the unexpected consequence of tort reform, which is meant to shield individuals and corporations from ambitious trial attorneys looking for a big pay day. But too often, legislation that limits liability following a major accident is devastating for families that have lost loved ones, and victims who no longer have the physical skills necessary to hold a job and provide for their families. California officials have asked Veolia, the other company involved in the 2008 train accident, to volunteer an extra $64 million to compensate the victims of wrongful death and catastrophic injuries, but the company has kept mum. “It is clear that no words and no amount of money can undo that tragic day,” a spokesman told the New York Daily News earlier this month.

Congress is considering legislation to raise the liability limit for future train accidents, but past efforts have consistently failed. California Rep. Elton Gallegly, formerly a proponent of tort reform, proposed a plan to increase the liability limit to $275 million after a previous plan to increase the number to $500 million failed the year before. We’ll keep you posted with any information about those attempts to raise the liability limit.

Photo credit: aussiegall

We wrote last week about the study linking autism to the use of popular antidepressants like Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, Celexa, Luvox, which are each selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). The study’s main author, Dr. Lisa Croen, writes that 300 children born with autism between 1995 and 1999 were compared to 1,500 children born without autism during the same time period. The results indicated that of the children born with autism, their parents were twice as likely to take antidepressants like Prozac and Zoloft during pregnancy, and mothers were four times more likely to have a child with autism if they took SSRI antidepressants during the first trimester of pregnancy.

Though this is an early study, it is a major departure from the prior consensus that autism was caused mostly by genetic factors. Even the National Institute of Mental Health states on its website, for example, that “research has shown that antidepressants, especially SSRIs, are safe during pregnancy.” The study adds that all medications taken during pregnancy can “cross the placental barrier and may reach the fetus.” The AGP authors believe this to be the link between use of antidepressants during pregnancy and autism development. SSRIs have an impact on the level of serotonin in the brain, and abnormal levels of serotonin are a key symptom of children with autism

Another study published in the same issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry adds to the rising evidence that environmental factors contribute at least partially to the development of autism. “Over the last decade, we’ve developed very good scientific information that links three of our classes of chemicals to brain injury of babies if the exposure occurs during pregnancy,” said Dr. Philip Landrigan of the Mount Sinai Medical Center and the National Children’s Study. The link between environmental factors and child development provides further evidence that taking antidepressants like Prozac and Zoloft during pregnancy could increase the likelihood of having a child with autism.

If your child was diagnosed with autism and you think use of SSRI antidepressants like Prozac or Zoloft may have been a contributing factor, you deserve to know all of the facts. The antidepressants and autism lawyers at GJEL are currently investigating the details on whether SSRI prescriptions contribute to the development of autism.

Photo credit: Sarah G…

Hot Coffee

Hot Coffee begins with the notorious Liebeck v. McDonald’s, in which 78 year-old Stella Liebeck won a $2.7 million verdict from the fast food mega chain after it sold her scorching hot coffee which caused second and third degree burns over much of her body. The lawsuit became the instant poster child for frivolous lawsuits and a centerpiece in the case for tort reform here in America. It was also the basis for the Seinfeld hot coffee lawsuit episode. Hot Coffee has earned glowing reviews in major national publications like the New York Times and the Washington Post, but we’re going to focus on what law blogs have said about the Hot Coffee.

The documentary emphasizes that the attorneys defending McDonald’s capitalized on the fact that the American public is dumb, writes Staci Zaretsky for legal tabloid Above the Law. The defense spun the story that Liebeck was trying to bilk McDonalds out of money she didn’t deserve, but Zaretsky describes the images of Liebeck’s injury as “one of the grossest, most disgusting things I’ve ever seen.” The film uses this as a launching pad to document the “evils” that the tort reform movement has perpetrated against countless other Americans. “I legitimately felt bad for these people,” writes Zaretsky, “Hot Coffee made me want to go out and protest and do community service.”

While Hot Coffee is clearly a powerful legal documentary, it’s not free from criticism, writes Nick Farr for the Abnormal Use blog. After all, the film’s director Susan Saladoff is a trial lawyer herself, and has a clear interest in exposing the “evils” of the tort reform movement. “The larger the verdict for the plaintiff, the larger the payday for the trial lawyer,” writes Farr. “It is noble to stand up for those who may have been wronged, but don’t present yourself as a disinterested party and cloak yourself in the guise of pure altruism when doing it.”

Capturing the Friedmans

Capturing the Friedmans essentially tells the story of a normal American family gone horribly wrong, and the legal battle that followed. The family became the center of a massive media firestorm after police began investigating Arnold Friedman for charges of child molestation after discovering a large collection of child pornography at his home in Great Neck, New York. After initially denying the charges, Arnold Friedman pleaded guilty to sodomy and sexual abuse. He died in prison in 2005, leaving a $250,000 life insurance policy to his son Jesse, who left prison in 2001 after serving 13 years for the same crimes as his father. Capturing the Friedmans won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

Despite Friedman’s guilty plea, the film unearths mounting evidence that he may have been wrongly convicted, which led veteran film reviewer Roger Ebert to write that it offered “an instructive lesson about the elusiveness of facts” in the American legal system. But despite this evidence, director Andrew Jarecki has caught criticism for keeping his own view of the Friedman debacle out of the film. In fact, Friedman’s case was very similar to multiple 1980s sex abuse convictions that were later proven to be false. “These spectacular allegations have since been exposed as utterly false,” write lawyers Harvey Silvergate and Carl Takei for Slate Magazine. “The convictions lacked physical evidence and relied on children’s testimony obtained by discredited investigative techniques.”

Jarecki seems to have gotten the message, and included additional evidence questioning the prosecution of Arnold and Jesse Friedman with the DVD release of the film.

Deliver Us From Evil

Deliver Us From Evil provides a portrait of Catholic priest Oliver O’Grady, who was convicted of molesting and raping more than two dozen children in Northern California in the 1980s and 1990s. O’Grady served seven years in prison for his crimes, but this 2006 award winning documentary film focuses on the Catholic Church’s policy of lying for priests in order to maintain a semblance of propriety. The film interviews victims of O’Grady’s abuse, and even the priest himself, who readily admits to being aroused by children and even declares callously “let bygones be bygones” of his crimes.

The trailer shows a prominent church Cardinal responding to the question “he had sexual urges toward a nine year old, is that cause to remove him from ministry” with a simple “no.” The film also takes issue with the role of gender when it comes to the acceptability of child abuse in the church, suggesting that priests are less likely to condemn molestation when it happens to girls, rather than boys. The trailer poignantly concludes with an attorney asking a Church big wig “do you think if a child were raped, that would be something that you would forget?” The priest’s attorney objects to the seemingly obvious question and instructs the witness not to answer.

Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father

This 2008 documentary, Dear Zachary, focuses on the ramifications of a legal system that fails to provide justice. After the charismatic future doctor Andrew Bagby was murdered, it wasn’t long before his former girlfriend was charged for the crime. It was enough time, however, for her to flee to Canada, leaving American courts unable to hold her accountable. The suspected murderer was pregnant with Bagby’s baby, which forced his parents to continue a civil relationship with the mother in order to stay connected to their only grandchild. Distraught, Bagby’s best friend – a filmmaker – decided to interview anyone who ever knew the victim, as a letter to the son he would never meet, Zachary.

The film was a critical success in the United States, and attracted best documentary nominations from the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Society of Professional Journalists, among others. The New York Times praised Dear Zachary as “at once a personal documentary about the murder of [the director’s] best friend and a polemical rant against the Canadian justice system for coddling a dangerous sociopath.” The film also targets the political nature of custody battles, which left Bagby’s parents unable to take responsible for their grandson, despite mounting evidence that his mother was dangerous and had possibly murdered the father.

Dr. Lisa Croen led this study, which selected 300 children born with autism between 1995 and 1999, and compared their medical histories with 1,500 children without autism born during the same period. The results were conclusive: the mothers of 6.7 percent of the children born with autism were prescribed the antidepressants during pregnancy, compared to 3.3 percent mothers of the children born without autism. The results were even more stark among mothers exposed to antidepressants during the first trimester: their children were four times more likely to develop autism than children with no history of antidepressant prescription use during pregnancy.

The researchers decided to investigate the link between antidepressant during pregnancy and autism following a sharp rise in autism diagnoses in the decades since the first SSRI, Prozac, was approved in the United States in 1987. Croen notes that many children diagnosed on the autism spectrum share a family history of mental disorders, and abnormal levels of serotonin in the brain is a key symptom of children with autism. “Almost everybody getting an antidepressant has some mental health disorder, and our study adds to the body of knowledge that shows that a family history of mental health problems may be associated with autism” she says.

If your child was diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder, the use of popular antidepressants like Prozac or Zoloft may have been a contributing factor. The antidepressants and autism lawyers at GJEL are currently investigating these cases, and our attorneys offer free consultation to parents who think this describes their situation.

Photo credit: Divine Harvester