Columbus, Ohio Attorney Blog - Robert W. Kerpsack Co., L.P.A.

A research studied published online last month in the BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal), reported a strong correlation between who was paying a doctor and their opinions about whether Avandia (rosiglitazone) represents a serious danger to patients. This study follows reports that the manufacturer, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), intimidated doctors and used poorly-designed studies to hide risks of dangerous cardiovascular side effects. If true, the combined accusations point to a decades-long conspiracy involving GSK officials on at least two continents to sacrifice the lives of people in order to profit from a defective drug.

The most recent study was a retrospective review of over 200 published articles on Avandia, performed by independent reviewers. Reviewers classified each article as favorable, neutral, or unfavorable. Researchers then correlated the classification with the author's source of funding. They found that 87% of doctors offering favorable views had potential conflicts of interest (although not all declared those conflicts), compared to only 20% of doctors who offered unfavorable opinions.

In response, a GSK spokesman said, in an email, "Of the 202 articles, only 10 were original scientific research. Many of the articles reviewed were opinion pieces -- editorials, commentaries or letters. It is important to note that the authors' conclusions do not impugn the validity of the scientific data."

However, scientific data for dangerous drugs is often limited, perhaps intentionally more so for Avandia than others. The largest study to test the risk of cardiovascular side effects, designed and run by GSK-sponsored researchers, was found to have "limited statistical power" to either confirm or exclude cardiovascular risks. In the absence of hard scientific data, doctors look to the opinions of their peers about whether or not to prescribe a particular drug, opinions that GSK seems to have been able to essentially buy.

Although it is not yet certain, it seems that many pieces of evidence point to a deliberate attempt on the part of GSK to intimidate scientists, obscure scientific data, and flood the literature with favorable reviews of its potentially deadly drug. And the strategy worked, since in 2007 Avandia was GSK's second-best-selling drug.

If you have been hurt or lost a loved one due to Avandia or another dangerous drug, you deserve compensation for your loss and the drug company must be made to pay if it acted inappropriately. Please call or email the pharmaceutical injury lawyers at Robert W. Kerpsack Co., LPA today for a free case evaluation.

This week, the state of Ohio announced its new campaign to take on "pill mills" that overprescribe opiate-based prescription drugs. The recent deaths of celebrities due to accidental overdoses, including Corey Haim, Brittany Murphy, and Michael Jackson, have focused public attention on this issue nationwide, but in Ohio the problem has reached epic proportions. The number of accidental overdoses in Ohio increased by 300 percent from 1999 to 2007 and continues to grow. Governor Ted Strickland described the indiscriminate distribution of opium-based pain medications as "immoral and illegal." The director of the Alcohol, Drugs, and Mental Health board in Fairfield County described the practices of some pain clinics as "criminally negligent."

The pain clinics are described as pill mills because they freely distribute medications that are addictive and deadly. They often have doctors in-house who prescribe pain medications often on request, never flinching at their gross medical malpractice. The clinics then distribute the medications on the spot, often operating on a cash-only basis. And once a person has a prescription for pain medication, they can often get it filled indefinitely, because only one in five doctors and pharmacists uses the Ohio Automated Rx Reporting System. This means that even many otherwise legitimate pharmacies and doctors contribute to the problem by making it harder to track abusers' prescriptions.

If your loved one suffered an accidental overdose, you may be able to file a wrongful death lawsuit. Your wrongful death lawsuit is about more than compensation for additional expenses you have suffered, it is about making negligent and criminal behavior unprofitable as well. Profit is one of the main motivators behind clinics turning a blind eye to the suffering they have caused, and a central tenet in Gov. Strickland's campaign. "To the pill mills out there making a profit by selling a poison," he said in a press conference, "let me be clear. We're coming for you." Your wrongful death lawsuit can help dry up the river of grey market opiates and hopefully save another family from suffering your pain.

We understand that this is a very difficult time, and we promise that we will do everything we can to make the process as easy and painless as we possibly can. For more information, contact the wrongful death attorney in Ohio, Robert W. Kerpsack, for a free case review.

Five men, a Marine Sergeant and four Marine recruits, were waiting at a traffic light when a semi truck impacted several other vehicles and sent their car careening into traffic where it was struck several times. According to witnesses, the semi truck hit a red pickup truck, sending it into a couple of other vehicles, then hit the pickup truck again, which then hit the Marine's Pontiac G6. The car and pickup were stopped at a traffic light, which had turned green just before the accident, and the semi truck did not stop or slow down sufficiently. Three of the Marine recruits were killed, one dying at the scene, and two more at area hospitals.

The recruits were on their way to Cleveland to spend the night before taking their recruitment oath. Investigators have ruled out brake failure as a possible cause for the truck accident, but are still conducting investigations to determine whether the accident was due to driver error or driving distracted as a result of cell phone use or texting.

Because of its central location, Ohio is a trucking hub, which is good for jobs and the local economy, but it also means that we suffer a disproportionate burden of trucking accidents. Truck accident lawsuits help us balance the cost of these injuries with the economic benefits of trucking.

If you have been injured or lost a loved one in a trucking accident, please call or email the personal injury lawyers of Robert W. Kerpsack CO., LPA today to discuss your legal options.

Toyota and its critics are deeply divided over the root cause of unintended acceleration problems. Toyota claims that the problems are mechanical, and has issued numerous recalls on the basis of mechanical problems, like the most recent recall of 2.3 million Toyotas for sticking gas pedals. Critics, however, cite problems with the electronics and claim that Toyota is concealing these problems. For its part, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has largely supported Toyota's claims, but some have charged that the agency lacks adequate technical knowledge to investigate the potential for defects in Toyota's sophisticated electronics. In response, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has recruited electronics experts from National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to help track down the problem. The NASA scientists will use their experience designing and troubleshooting electronics subjected to a variety of electromagnetic conditions to help the NHTSA study the potential link between defective electronics and the cars' sudden acceleration problems.

In addition, LaHood as enlisted the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to conduct a detailed review of electronic vehicle controls in all cars to determine if a systematic or widespread problem exists. The NAS review is intended to provide an in-depth analysis of the possibility for widespread problems in the use of electronic throttle controls in cars.

The claim that the electronic throttle control is to blame in unexplained acceleration events has been forwarded primarily by product liability lawyers representing people injured in car accidents caused by defective vehicles. They have enlisted experts who claim to have overridden the Toyota's safety systems, which, they say, are less strict than those used on other cars. The claim is that once the safety systems have failed there is a possibility that any external stimulus, like a transient magnetic field from the radio or other nearby electronic components, could cause a spontaneous acceleration event. Currently, neither the NHTSA nor Toyota has been able to reproduce spontaneous acceleration using electromagnetic fields.

Hopefully, the addition of outside experts can clear up this ongoing controversy and either confirm Toyota's claims or identify the true source of problems so that we can all feel safer on the road.

If you have been hurt by a car accident due to a defective vehicle, please call or email Robert W. Kerpsack, CO, LPA today for a free case evaluation.

On Tuesday, I talked about how noneconomic damage caps deny us our constitutional right as members of juries to make socially-contexted judgments about the price of the priceless. However, the other side of the question is: does tort reform work to control costs? If it does, then it may be one of the many circumstances in which we are asked to sacrifice some rights in order to get a social benefit. Namely, we forego the right of a jury trial in order to make health care more affordable for more people.

The argument is that by limiting payouts in medical malpractice lawsuits, doctors will see a reduction in medical malpractice liability costs and therefore more doctors will be able to charge less for their services, reducing the cost of healthcare.

However, this has not proven to be the case. In a survey of national healthcare costs, the Kaiser Family Foundation found that the average cost of an employer-based family health plan had increased by 19 percent in Ohio since the medical malpractice damage caps were put in place, less than the nationwide average of 22 percent. But in contrast, nearby Kentucky, which has enacted no tort reforms, saw an even slower growth in premiums. And, actually, this is a turnaround from the period before Ohio enacted tort reforms, when Kentucky's insurance costs rose faster than those in Ohio. That's right, although tort reform, including the cap on noneconomic damages, was supposed to control costs, it actually accelerated them in Ohio.

This is partly because tort reform actually has nothing to do with healthcare costs. A statistical analysis shows no correlation between the cost of medical malpractice insurance premiums and health insurance premiums. Ohio, for example, has the 16th highest medical malpractice insurance premiums, but is blessed with the 8th lowest health insurance premiums. In contrast, Kentucky has the 27th highest medical malpractice insurance premiums, but the fourth lowest health insurance premiums. Florida has the highest medical malpractice insurance premiums (and is considered the US' number one "Judicial Hellhole"), but is ranked 16th in health insurance premiums. Alaska has the highest health insurance premiums, but is ranked 37th in medical malpractice insurance. In fact, on average, medical malpractice premiums are HIGHER in states that have enacted tort reforms than in states with no reform ($44,799 vs. $43,709).

Although there is no correlation between tort reform and healthcare costs, tort reform is correlated with higher profits for insurance companies. In states with no damage caps, profitability for insurance companies rose by 25% from 2004-2008, but in states with damage caps, profitability rose by 45%.

In other words, with noneconomic damage caps, we have given away the right of an injured person to receive full compensation for their injuries and our constitutional right as citizens to determine the value of those injuries, not for lower healthcare costs, but for insurance company profits.

If you have been hurt by a doctor's negligence, the medical malpractice lawyers of Robert W. Kerpsack & CO., LPA, will fight for your rights to the full extent allowed by the law. Please call or email us today for a free initial consultation.

Yesterday, the Georgia Supreme Court struck down the state's legislative cap on noneconomic damages in medical malpractice lawsuits. The Supreme Court relied on not only the authority of the Georgia Constitution, but on pre-Constitutional precedents that the Georgia Constitution recognized as standing law to say that the right to a jury trial includes the right to damages decided by a jury. Because the noneconomic damages cap explicitly, unilaterally, and categorically limits noneconomic damages, the Court said that it interfered with a jury's ability to decide the actual damages. And, since the finding of damages is considered to be a finding of fact, the Court said the cap was tantamount to telling a jury what verdict it had to deliver.

The Court did its homework on this one, attempting not only to establish the Constitutionality, but to demonstrate the fundamental values and deeply-established roots of personal injury lawsuits like medical malpractice. The first case referenced was in fact the first recorded medical malpractice case in England, dating from 1374, and the Court noted that "mala praxis" was established as one of the five categories of "private wrongs" in Blackstone's 1765-1769 Commentaries on English Law: "mala praxis is a great misdemeanor and offence at common law, whether it be for curiosity and experiment or by neglect; because it breaks the trust which the party has placed in his physician and tends to the patient's destruction" (Book 3, Ch. 8, Sec 4, some spelling modernized).

In addition, the court pointed out that for some injuries, the noneconomic damages are the most important part of a jury's verdict. For this, it relied on the 1860 birth injury case of Smith v. Overby, a birth injury lawsuit where the justice explained the value of nonphysical damages using the example of a man who is spit on in public: "what, I ask, is the actual injury. The mere bodily suffering? That is nothing. Men have a moral as well as a physical nature. Here the injury is done to his feelings, his honor, his pride, his social position. Suffer these to go unprotected, unredressed, and life is no longer tolerable. Hence the jury in such a case should render large damages, not as punishment, but to compensate the actual injury. They must put a price on the manhood of a free man, and mulct the defendant accordingly." In other words, it is the jury's job to somehow try to put a price on the priceless.

Putting a price on the priceless has been a central tenet of tort law since at least the Laws of Ur-Nammu (c. 2112-2050(?) BCE)--which puts prices on a man's eye, his foot, his nose, his tooth and other priceless treasures. In ancient times, this power rested in the king, who could say, "this is the value of your eye, your arm, your unborn child." When we removed the king from government, we rested that power in the people, specifically "the enlightened conscience of impartial jurors." Noneconomic damage caps wrest that power back, replacing the voice of the people with a Sumerian edict, "This much for your deprivation of life, this much for your liberty, this much for your pursuit of happiness."

Unfortunately, since noneconomic damage caps were upheld by Ohio's cuneiform Court, we can only look in envy on those in other states who have been restored the full measure of Constitutional rights, Illinois last year, and now Georgia.

But if you have been hurt by the negligence of a doctor, the lawyers of Robert W. Kerpsack, CO., LPA stand ready to get you the full measure of justice permitted by law. Please call or email us today for a free consultation.