New York Injury Lawyers Blog

July 23, 2018

In New York City, Traffic Deaths Continue to Decline

Following a five-year pattern, New York’s traffic deaths continued to decline during the first six months of the year. From January to June, a total of 81 traffic fatalities occurred throughout the five boroughs. With the exception of motorcycle fatalities, all other traffic fatalities saw a decrease compared to the immediately preceding year. The continued decline is largely attributed to Mayor de Blasio’s “Vision Zero” campaign which aims to reduce vehicular deaths and pedestrian deaths to zero.

Across the city, vehicular deaths have decreased a full 30 percent since 2013. For pedestrian deaths, the decline is even steeper – at a full 45 percent compared to five years ago. According to The New York Times, pedestrian deaths are the lowest since at least 1910, when the city began keeping record of the fatalities.

July 15, 2018

New York Doctors Prescribed More Opioids After Receiving Money from their Manufacturers

by Gallivan & Gallivan

A new report found that New York doctors who received payments from opioid manufacturers were more likely to prescribe opioids to their patients. More disturbingly, the report, released by the New York State Health Foundation, found that as payments from the drug manufacturers to the doctors increased the prescription rate for their addictive painkillers increased almost lock-step. Overall, opioid manufacturers paid more than $3.5 million to New York state doctors between 2013 and 2015, as the opioid problem in the country began to reach epidemic levels.

According to the New York State Health Foundation, a nonprofit foundation established less than a decade ago, roughly one in 10 physicians received payouts from opioid manufacturers. The President and CEO, David Sandman bluntly said, “The more money you get, the more opioids you prescribe.” The data released by the agency confirms his statement. Doctors who received less than $20 from opioid manufacturers – approximately the cost of lunch or dinner – billed Medicare for an average of $34,000 just for opiates, which include hydrocodone, oxycontin, and fentanyl.

If the doctor received between $20 to $50 from the drug companies, the average billing went up to $50,000. For the 3,000 New York physicians who received more than $1,000 from these companies, Medicare was billed an astounding $1.24 million just in opioid prescriptions. The doctors who received payments from opioid manufacturers increased their prescriptions for these dangerous and addictive drugs by almost 37.2 percent in just two years. Doctors who did not receive any payment from the drug companies increased their prescriptions by just 15.6 percent.

July 13, 2018

After Dancing Through Her Surgeries, Georgia Doctor is Finally Suspended

by Gallivan & Gallivan

A Georgia doctor who wanted to be known as the “dancing doctor” will no longer be a doctor in the State of Georgia. In a fantastic story by the New York Times, the dermatologist, whose name is Dr. Windell Davis-Boutte, would stop in the middle of her surgeries and perform a dance routine to popular hip-hop and rap songs. Then, the doctor would post them to her social media account, which was deleted after more than 100 patients came forward and several lawsuits were filed against the now-disgraced doctor.

Davis-Boutte advertised herself on her website as having “MASTERFUL SURGICAL EXPERTISE, having sought additional extensive training by some of the most famous surgeons in the world.” The patients who were harmed during her surgeries provide a different story. One patient, who was included in a video of the former dermatologist dancing to the song “Cut It” received a botched liposuction, breast augmentation, and Brazilian butt lift operation all on the same day. In the video, one of the 20 provided to the New York Times, the former doctor prods the midsection of the patient and then finger rolls her skin to the beat of the song. According to the newspaper, once the hook begins she starts “slicing the air with her scalpel… then making incisions, her scalpel moving rhythmically to the song.” The day after the surgery, the patient had a “collapsed lung and suffered from anemia because of her acute blood loss.”

July 11, 2018

Medication Errors Common in ICU Transfers

by Gallivan & Gallivan

A new report by Christiana Care Health System showed that medication errors occurred in 47 percent of ICU Transfers. The study which followed 985 patients at almost 60 different ICUs across the East Coast who were transferred from the ICU to a non-ICU area in the same hospital or medical unit. According to the study, an average of 1.88 errors occurred per patient transferred out of the ICU, a startlingly high number.

The report, authored by Andrea Tully and detailed in MDMag.com, found that the most common errors related to anti-infectives, hematologic agents, and intravenous fluids, electrolytes or diuretics. The patients with the highest risk of a medication error were patients taking the most medications and patients in need of renal replacement therapy. While 75 percent of these medication errors were deemed “Category C” which meant no actual harm or minimal harm caused to the patient, a full 25 percent caused harm to the patient. According to patient care advocates, these numbers are unacceptable.

June 6, 2018

Renowned Heart Doctor Violated Ethics Rules, Harmed Patients

by Gallivan & Gallivan

In an attempt to advance the medical field, a world-renowned heart surgeon stands accused of violating ethical rules and harming patients, according to a groundbreaking report by ProPublica. The heart doctor, O.H. “Bud” Frazier, is credited with saving thousands of lives in his obsessive, career-long drive to create an artificial heart. However, to reach his admittedly noble goal he skirted ethical guidelines, defrauded Medicare, and harmed patients in an attempt to advance his research. Perhaps most disturbingly, his clinic, Texas Heart in Houston, along with several other doctors on the staff, apparently knew of Dr. Frazier’s ethical lapses and proceeded to either do nothing or actively hide the illegal and immoral behavior, according to the newspaper’s expose.

According to ProPublica, Dr. Frazier, who quit performing surgeries last year when he turned 75, is accused of the following:

Inappropriately diagnosing patients with advanced stage heart failure, in an attempt to install experimental heart pumps in the patients. According to hospital records viewed by the newspaper, an internal investigation made the Board of Directors at St. Luke’s Hospital, the hospital in charge of Texas Heart, aware of the problem who wrote at the time that if “…the affiliation should be dissolved, the impact to St. Luke’s market position is unclear. It’s likely that such news would generate national attention and negatively impact our standing in the US News and World Report rankings.” The executives chose to do nothing at the time.

June 2, 2018

Increasing Concerns Over Worker Safety in New York

by Gallivan & Gallivan

Three Metro-North construction workers were injured in March when an iron beam fell off a truck and pinned the workers to the railroad tracks in East Harlem. According to the New York Post, a 2-by-3 foot beam fell on Track 3 at East 100^th Street and Park Avenue. All three of the construction workers involved in the accident were taken to the hospital, two suffered significant injuries when the beam fell on them and the third construction worker injured his leg.

The accident comes on the heels of the death of an MTA worker in the same month at the 125^th street station. In that instance, the MTA worker, identified as St. Clair Richards-Stephens by the New York Post, was walking on a wooden rail when it collapsed. Richards-Stephens fell approximately 20 feet to the lower-level of the station and, after frantic efforts to revive the construction worker by medical personnel, was declared dead at the scene.

May 29, 2018

Hit-and-Run Fatalities Increase Across the Country

by Gallivan & Gallivan

Hit-and-run fatalities have seen a marked increase throughout the country as more Americans are bicycling and walking to work, according to the Wall Street Journal. Citing a report released by AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, the newspaper states that hit-and-run fatalities increased 61 percent between 2009 and 2016. In 2016 alone, 68 percent of the fatalities in hit-and-run accidents were pedestrians or bicyclists. According to the Wall Street Journal, the increase in Americans choosing healthier modes of transportation is the leading cause of the increase in deaths.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, there were 1,980 fatal hit-and-run accidents which caused a stunning 2,050 deaths. Both of these numbers represent record highs, according to the federal agency which has been tracking these statistics for over four decades. Overall, there were 40,000 traffic fatalities in 2017 – the second year the rate of fatalities has seen a significant increase, and following years of declining deaths in traffic accidents.

May 25, 2018

Scaffolding Collapse in Brooklyn Injures Construction Worker, Two Pedestrians

by Gallivan & Gallivan

Three people were injured in April when scaffolding collapsed near the entrance to the Borough Hall Train Station in Brooklyn Heights. The scaffolding, which was being taken down at the time, left one construction worker with serious injuries and two pedestrians with relatively minor injuries. The company responsible for the scaffolding, New Force Construction Corporation, has previously been fined $25,000 by the New York City Department of Buildings for not following worker safety laws.

According to a witness speaking to CBS New York, “We just all of a sudden heard a crashing of the scaffolding, and then people screaming.” Other witnesses described a similar scene of mayhem when the 20-foot section of scaffolding in front of the Starbucks came crashing down onto two pedestrians who happened to be walking under the sidewalk shed. According to witnesses on the scene, the two pedestrians suffered relatively minor injuries while the construction worker’s arm appeared to be “seriously hurt and badly injured.” In addition to the three New Yorkers injured in the collapse, the faulty sidewalk shed also took down a crosswalk light at the intersection of Court Street and Joralemon Street, according to the NYPD.

May 22, 2018

New Safety Grades Released for NYC Hospitals

by Gallivan & Gallivan

New York hospitals rank among the lowest in the nation for patient safety, according to a non-profit group. The Empire State ranked 48^th out of the 50 states, a one-spot improvement from last year. Overall, almost 6 percent of hospitals received an “F” for patient safety – a notable increase from the nationwide average of under 1 percent. A total of 137 hospitals in New York were graded, according to NBC New York.

The rankings, which are released every year, are released by Leapfrog Group and rank 2,500 hospitals across the country. The grades – ranging from an “A” to an “F” – are based on the rate of hospital errors (including medication errors), accidents, infections, and the number of preventable pressure ulcers, among several other factors. Leapfrog Group ranks hospitals individually and then aggregates the data and ranks each state collectively.

May 21, 2018

First Revenge Porn Lawsuit Filed in New York City

by Gallivan & Gallivan

A health professor at the City University of New York (CUNY) filed the first civil lawsuit under New York City’s “Revenge Porn” law, which was passed in November last year and went into effect in February. The professor, Dr. Spring Chenoa Cooper, alleges that her ex-boyfriend shared explicit images and videos of her online and linked the intimate material to her CUNY faculty page, in an attempt to harass her and destroy her career.

In her lawsuit, Cooper alleges that after ending a “tumultuous” relationship with her ex-boyfriend, Ryan Broems, in November, he began harassing her for weeks online by asking her invasive and inappropriate questions about her relationships and sex life. After blocking his text messages and social media accounts, she received a message from an unknown Tumblr account that demanded she provide intimate details of her life or else intimate pictures and videos of her would be posted online. After refusing the Tumblr user’s demands, intimate videos and pictures of her appeared on the user’s page. In the lawsuit, Cooper alleges that the Tumblr user is her ex-boyfriend Broems because he is the only person who received the explicit photographs and videos.