Med Mal and Expired Drugs Don’t Mix

Having expired drugs on board an EMS vehicle is a pretty serious infraction. Expired drugs may cost someone their life.

“I heard about this particular case, and it raises some very serious questions about the drugs on board EMS ambulances. While this instance was reported in Georgia, the ramifications could apply across the US, even down to a local ambulance service provider,” insisted Donahue.

“It was time for state inspections for ambulance crews and the results of the inspection in one county were quite disturbing. At least two of the local ambulances had expired drugs on board; drugs that are commonly used to save lives. For instance calcium chloride, the drug used to kick start a failing heart and EpiPen, used for people with severe allergies who are going into or have gone into anaphylactic shock,” recounted Charlie Donahue who is a New Hampshire personal injury lawyer located in Keene. Donahue handles injury cases in New Hampshire and across the United States.

Granted, not all drugs that reach their expiry date have gone “bad,” and in fact the shelf life of some of the drugs is a great deal longer. However, expiry dates are stamped on them for a reason; a “what-if something happened if we gave someone an expired drug and it harmed them” kind of reason. “More to the point, if anyone should have up-to-date drugs, it should be paramedic crews. That is mandated by law,” stated Donahue.

Unfortunately, one ambulance had nine expired drugs and another was found with two expired drugs. This was not only a breach of safety regulations, but a potential accident looking for a place to happen. There are a lot of people today that are drug sensitive. If they’d been administered an expired drug and the result was serious personal injury or death, the fault would lie with the paramedics and the ambulance company.

The scary part is that all paramedics in this particular county (and quite likely in other locations as well) are obligated to verify that all on board meds have “not” gone past their expiry dates. In fact, all drugs were/are to be checked the first day of every month and daily before responding to any calls. “Granted that an expired drug doesn’t go bad immediately, the point remains the same: having expired drugs on an emergency vehicle is simple not a safe option. The consequences could spell disaster for some unsuspecting person in need of medical assistance,” Donahue outlined.

Cases like this are tough ones because it is only the luck of the draw that uncovers the fact that there may be a potential serious issue. “A more difficult thing to comprehend is someone not doing their job and checking the on rig medications, as required by law. If you think something like this may have happened to you, you might want to check in with a New Hampshire personal injury lawyer to find out what your rights are, and if it is possible to file a lawsuit what your next step should be,” added Donahue.

To learn more, visit Donahuelawfirm.com.

Narcotics and Cars Don’t Mix

Why people think that taking narcotics and driving is safe is unbelievable. This case is a clear example of the deadly consequences of mixing narcotics and cars.

Being a New Hampshire personal injury attorney, I often have the chance to read about other cases that involve things like car crashes, motorcycle accidents, slip and falls, and medical malpractice and wrongful death. This one case stood out for me because it seemed senseless. It involved a rollover that killed one and injured four others, including a toddler.

This was a single vehicle crash and from the looks of the police report, it happened when a silver Infiniti was heading east on the highway, when the driver tried to pass a slower vehicle on the left. Just as the passing Infiniti got to the midway point in passing, the driver saw another oncoming car, swerved right suddenly and hit the right shoulder, causing the vehicle to flip over and land on its roof in the ditch.

When EMS crews arrived they immediately took the backseat passenger, a 60-year-old man, to the local hospital. He was dead on arrival. The driver, a 32-year-old man, his wife and two kids (2 and 12) were taken to the hospital by other rescue teams. Thankfully, although badly shaken up and sporting a variety of crash related injuries, they were all treated and released. Narcotics were found on the 60-year-old man who died in the hospital. There will be a full investigation.

The presence of narcotics raises a lot of unanswered questions, and it’s a good bet the local police will be running tests on the driver of the car to check for drugs and other substances. No one knows for sure if the man in the back seat was related in any way to the driver and his wife, or was a friend.

This would raise the issue of whether the man’s family could file a wrongful death lawsuit for the negligence of the 32-year-old driver for attempting to pass while it was not safe. If the investigation shows negligence, a civil suit can be expected. There may also be a chance of a criminal investigation. In circumstances like this, you sometimes you get both. “Frankly, it looks like someone screwed up, because passing while unsafe to do so is negligence, plain and simple, and this case screams for a civil suit,” added Donahue.

Like many personal injury car crashes, sometimes things look one way on the surface, and yet on further investigation, they turn out to be something else. If you have been involved in a car accident or other vehicle crash, and you suspect drugs may have been involved on the part of the other driver, you might want to speak to a seasoned New Hampshire personal injury lawyer; one whose only job is to help injury victims.

Charlie Donahue is a New Hampshire personal injury lawyer located in Keene. Donahue handles injury cases in New Hampshire and across the United States. To learn more about New Hampshire injury attorney, Charlie Donahue, visit Donahuelawfirm.com.

Two Teens Injured by Snowplow

Following the rules of the road applies to everyone. That includes snowplows.

“The way I heard about this case was that it involved a snowplow operator who blew a yield sign,” explained Charlie Donahue, a New Hampshire personal injury lawyer.

The way this accident happened was that two teens were headed home in their white Pontiac Grand Prix when they were broadsided by a snowplow. “While the plow operator admitted he was tired and wasn’t seeing straight, there is still a duty on the driver to take care and obey the rules of the road – more so because of the size of the vehicle he was driving and the fact that he didn’t pay attention to a sign right in front of him,” said Donahue.

The other question here was how fast was the snowplow operator going, as the impact totally crushed the car; enough so that the EMS crews needed the Jaws of Life to extricate both teens. “Both teens were immediately taken to the nearest medical facility for treatment, where it was discovered they had sustained non-life threatening, yet serious head and leg injuries,” Donahue outlined. At the scene, the plow operator admitted he’d put in some very long hours clearing snow. If that was the case, one wonders why he was behind the wheel of a deadly vehicle.

“It should be mentioned here that head injuries have a nasty habit of turning out worse than they may appear, simply because the head is a very vulnerable area. If there was any traumatic brain injury involved and it is permanent and debilitating, one or both of these kids will need a serious settlement to be able to live a normal life,” Donahue added.

Responding police personnel issued the snowplow driver with a citation for failure to yield the right of way causing bodily harm. Whether or not alcohol or another drug played a factor in this case, no one is quite sure. The investigation will turn up that kind of evidence later.

Both teens will be in a good position to file personal injury lawsuits to recover the costs of their medical expenses, therapy, medications, pain and suffering, disability, impairment, anguish, counseling, loss of wages if they had jobs, possible wheelchair and rehab expenses, renovations to homes to allow for their injuries and possible home care if one of both of them are permanently impaired. While it may take a while for the case to get to court, they should stand a good chance of getting a fair and equitable settlement.

Being in an accident like this, or any other type of accident, is devastating for those involved and they feel like their lives are out of control. “My best advice to those facing something like this is to call an experienced personal injury attorney immediately and discuss the case. Find out what your rights are; find out how to handle the fallout from the case; and find out if you may be able to receive compensation from the person at fault in the accident,” added Charlie Donahue, a New Hampshire personal injury lawyer.

Charlie Donahue is a New Hampshire personal injury lawyer located in Keene. Donahue handles injury cases in New Hampshire and across the United States. To learn more about New Hampshire injury attorney, Charlie Donahue, visit Donahuelawfirm.com.

Nursing Home Abuse – It’s Enough to Make You Weep

Imagine one of your relatives being so doped up in a nursing home they don’t know who you are when you visit. Look for other signs of nursing home abuse immediately.

When you make the decision to place a relative in a nursing home, you don’t do it just because you “can.” You do it because they need care you can’t provide. You trust the nursing home management and staff will treat your relative with the same care and dignity that you would. In many instances, you would be right; in others, you would be in for the shock of your life.

Consider the case of Betsy Penny(names have been changed to protect the victims), so doped with pain medications she didn’t need and that her family didn’t want give to her, that she could no longer recognize her sister or other family members that came to visit her. Penny herself barely recalls the ugly details of the nursing home she lived in for a year, but she does remember how frightened she was all the time.

When Penny entered the home in 2006 at the age of 73, she was able to walk and talk. Eleven months later her family took her out because by then she was strapped into a wheelchair and wasn’t aware of anything going on around her. Her family is positive she would be dead today if they had not removed her. It took Penny over four months to recover from the effects of all the unnecessary drugs she was given daily to make her compliant and complacent.

There were other signals that all was not well at the nursing home in which Penny lived. Residents were so heavily drugged their heads were planted in the middle of their meals and Penny’s room smelled strongly of urine. Respect and dignity were totally absent.

Penny recalls the time she broke her hip and instead of getting protective bracing for the bed, they told her to sleep on the floor. The final straw was when a nurse gave Penny an insulin dose that just about put her in a coma. Penny is and was not diabetic, and had no need to use or any reason to be given insulin. Her family had enough and took her home.

Not only had the family had it with the nursing home, they were angry that other seniors were being treated the same way Penny was handled. They filed a nursing home malpractice lawsuit, yet to be resolved, but they are determined to stick to their guns and put an end to nursing home abuse. This may be a tough case, as the owner of the nursing home at the time Penny was a resident there was charged with felony health care fraud.

It also looks like the new owners have a string of charges and fines totaling $900,000 filed against them for Medicare and Medicaid fraud – specifically failing to provide proper/adequate care for residents of “their” nursing homes. Kind of makes one wonder about how the residents will be treated by the new owners.

Let’s be perfectly clear about something here; nursing home abuse is “not” acceptable in any way, shape or form. It is ugly, destructive, treats valuable human beings like garbage and needs to stop – right now. If you have suspicions about a nursing home your relative may be in, have proof abuse is stalking the hallways of the home, call a dedicated and skilled nursing home abuse lawyer. These cases are critically important for more than one reason. They are about making a nursing home environment safer for seniors and about putting a stop to this violence and abuse for the next generation to follow; and that generation would be us.

Charlie Donahue is a New Hampshire personal injury lawyer located in Keene. Donahue handles injury cases in New Hampshire and across the United States. To learn more about New Hampshire injury attorney, Charlie Donahue, visit Donahuelawfirm.com.

That’s the Way the Cookie Crumbles

The very last place you would expect to find E. coli is in your refrigerator cookie dough. It’s happened, and now even cookie dough is a dangerous product.

When growing up, there was a whole lot of time spent in the kitchen gathered around the oven, waiting for those hot chocolate chip cookies to come out. Impatience defined that brief 15 minute period while the cookies spread with the heat and went golden brown. There was nothing better than homemade cookies.

Along comes the 21st century and time is in short supply, so short we have taken to cutting corners when it comes to baking at home. For example, Nestlé’s refrigerated cookie dough that lets anyone cut off cookie sized chunks, slap them on a cookie sheet and when the timer dings, they’re done. Nice and crumbly and delicious. That’s the way the cookie crumbles.

It’s no longer applicable with refrigerated cookie dough, since a lot of people are eating the dough rather than baking the cookies. While that might save time, it evidently may also cause them to be severely ill with E. coli 0157:H7. This strain of E. coli has some particularly nasty symptoms and has, over the last year, laid at least 72 people in 30 states flat out. What a world. We can’t even trust the cookie dough in the fridge. What’s worse is that Nestlé’s still hasn’t figured out “why” their dough is contaminated. Hardly a statement to instill consumer confidence.

Nestlé’s has cried “Mea culpa” and yanked its most recent batch of cookie dough out of circulation. Meaning, when they were doing routine testing at their main plant in early January 2010, they found two samples testing positive for E. coli. Dough produced before and after the contaminated cookie run was destroyed. Luckily, none of “that” batch was shipped. However, this recent move didn’t do much for the 72 folks who became deathly ill after eating “other” batches of tainted cookie dough. The company needs to be held accountable for their dangerous product and its affect on unsuspecting consumers.

While their proactive move in January to using heat-treated flour in their dough should make the product safer, the question is, what about the people who got sick earlier? Using the heat-treated flour will also mean a shortage of cookie dough on the market until March, when the new formulation hits the shelves.

So, why didn’t Nestlé’s do something about this earlier? Looks like the bottom line is that they had to reformulate their cookie recipes to make them still taste homemade and have the same cookie crumble texture. By all reports, they succeeded, and the new dough should be just dandy fine. The people who were violently ill will likely not be buying anymore refrigerated cookie dough; heat-treated flour or not. Consumers who have lived through wave after wave of dangerous product recalls, including Tylenol twice, are also jaded enough to revert to home cooking once more. It’s safer.

Right now, the company suggests that consumers don’t eat raw cookie dough and that they bake the cookies first. While the warning is welcome, it’s too late, and not everyone will be aware of the dangers even with the product warning. If you’ve eaten raw cookie dough and paid the price of becoming severely ill, or have a dangerous product horror story, you need to speak to a dangerous products lawyer who knows how to hold the culprits accountable. Find a people lawyer who will tell it like it is, not tell you what you want to hear.

Charlie Donahue is a New Hampshire personal injury lawyer located in Keene. Donahue handles injury cases in New Hampshire and across the United States. To learn more about New Hampshire injury attorney, Charlie Donahue, visit Donahuelawfirm.com.