Delaware Business Lawyer Blog

As a Delaware medical malpractice lawyer, I've become more and more involved with clients who acquired MRSA in the hospital. Now comes a report that a 77 year old woman who was in the Abington Memorial Hospital was a victim of contracting MRSA while in the hospital. This poor woman had to undergo 20 surgeries as a result, and she ended up dying due to the infection. The hospital's chief of staff has been quoted as saying that this infection was brought into this woman's room on the hands of someone in the hospital.

For more information, check out:
MRSA Is Preventable
Infections In Hospitals
MRSA- Too Many People Get Sick In Hospitals
HA-MRSA Is A Growing Danger

As a Delaware medical malpractice lawyer, I have strong feelings when relatively healthy clients of mine go into the hospital for routine surgery, and get real sick because of a lapse in infection control. This is a series of articles dealing with hospital acquired MRSA.

For more information, check out:
MRSA Is Preventable
Infections In Hospitals
MRSA- Too Many People Get Sick In Hospitals

As a Delaware car accident lawyer, I am constantly fighting with insurance companies for my clients who have received soft tissue injuries in an accident. The purpose of this article is to explain what soft tissue injuries are, and how they occur.

Let’s take a look at a neck injury caused by a rear end car accident. Upon impact from the rear, the car is propelled forward and the body and the shoulders are driven out from under the head. The head stays still based on the law of inertia that says when an object is still it tends to remain still. As the body and shoulders are pushed forward, and the head stays still, the head snaps backwards, severely stressing the neck. As the car abruptly comes to a stop either from hitting the car in front or from the driver braking, the head recoils forward because of the momentum of the stopping car. This movement causes the ligaments and muscles to become torn and strained, and this causes hemorrhages. This eventually heals with scar tissue which is not as elastic as a normal muscle, and this in turn causes your brain to tell you you’re in pain.

As a Delaware car accident attorney, one of the battles I have to fight for a lot of my clients who suffer a sprain and strain of their neck (cervical strain & sprain) or back (lumbar strain & sprain) has to do with the way insurance companies try to minimize the consequences of what they call a “soft tissue injury.” One of the things they say is that these injuries don’t show up on an MRI or a CT Scan. It’s as if they’re saying if you can’t see the injury, it doesn’t exist. In other words, they’re calling you a liar.

So basically, their report that my client has subjective complaints is true, but the conclusion they reach from that is not true. It’s like the hubble telescope. When the scientists turned it on, they saw planets and stars they’ve never seen before. These astronomical bodies didn’t just happen to come into existence the moment the telescope was turned on. They have always been there - we just couldn’t see them.

As a Delaware lawyer who handles birth injury cases, I find it tragic that many times these injuries are avoidable. The unborn baby sends out signals saying "I'm in trouble," and the doctor fails to take action. It's like sitting in a room when a smoke detector starts beeping, and you sit in front of your TV and grab another beer.

After a trial, the jury decided that the brain damage should have been prevented, and awarded the family $23.4 million.

As a Delaware lawyer who prepares Wills and loves animals, I’m pleased to say that Delaware is one of the states that allows us to create a trust for the care of our pets after we die. So, if you have 1 or more animals and you’re concerned about what will happen to them after you die, you should consider changing your Will to include a “pet trust.” It’s very easy to do this. You keep your original Will, and we prepare a new document called a “Codicil” which contains the changes you want to make.

The pet trust would also name a person or an organization to receive any of the funds that are left in the trust when your pet dies.

As a Delaware business lawyer, I'm often asked whether you need an attorney to form a Delaware corporation or a Delaware limited liability company (LLC). A related question is whether your registered agent should be an attorney.

I'm the first to admit that it's not easy searching the internet for a registered agent in Delaware. Talk about a ton of information. But if you're looking for a registered agent who can offer legal services if and when you need them, then you've come to the right place. In my next artice, I'll talk about the services I provide. In the meantime, feel free to check out my website.

As a Delaware medical malpractice attorney, I can never get used to the words "sometimes, bad things happen in hospitals." The reason these words bother me so much is that I only hear them when the bad thing that happened was preventable. One of these preventable bad things is infection.

Researchers at Duke University Medical Center recently announced the results of a large study about infections from surgery. According to the lead author of the study:

"We found that patients with surgical site infections due to MRSA were 35 times more likely to be readmitted and seven times more likely to die within 90 days compared to uninfected surgical patients."

"These patients also required more than three weeks of additional hospitalization and accrued more than $60,000 in additional charges."

MRSA infection is caused by Staphylococcus aureus bacteria, often called "staph." MRSA infections that occur in hospitals or other health care settings such as nursing homes and dialysis centers is commonly known as HA-MRSA, which stands for health care-associated MRSA.

MRSA usually starts as small red bumps that looks like pimples, boils or spider bites. These can quickly turn into deep, painful abscesses that require surgical draining. In some cases, the bacteria remain confined to the skin, but in other cases they can penetrate into the body, causing potentially life-threatening infections in bones, joints, surgical wounds, the bloodstream, heart valves and lungs.

As a Delaware medical malpractice lawyer, I'm currently representing a woman who contracted MRSA while she was in a local hospital. This preventable infection is all too common. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 2 million hospital infections occur each year, and about 90,000 people die each year from infections they got while in the hospital.

This topic was the subject of an interesting book review that appeared in the NY Times.

According to this review, in order to prevent a patient from getting an infection when a catheter is inserted in the vein, there are five things that doctors should:
(1) wash hands with soap
(2) clean the patient’s skin with antiseptic
(3) cover the patient’s entire body with sterile drapes
(4) wear a mask, hat, sterile gown and gloves
(5) put a sterile dressing over the insertion site after the line is in

Incredibly, in some hospitals, doctors skip one of these steps. The failure to follow any one of these steps is a departure from the standard of care, and constitutes medical malpractice.

As a Delaware birth injury lawyer, I am asked to review cases to determine whether the parents have a case. A birth injury is any kind of injury that a newborn receives during the process of being born. Sometimes these injuries occur even when the mother does everything she’s supposed to do during her pregnancy. And sometimes the injury just occurs. But then there are times when a newborn infant is injured because of a medical error on the part of a doctor or a hospital. In other words, the injury was preventable.

Here are some common examples of negligence or medical malpractice resulting in birth injuries:

(1) Failing to perform a C-section when an emergency arises that calls for the immediate delivery of the baby

(2) Failing to recognize fetal distress

(3) Failing to administer Pitocin correctly (Pitocin is a drug that’s given to induce labor)

(4) Failing to properly use a forceps during delivery

When a doctor’s mistakes cause injury to your baby, you have the right to file a lawsuit and recover money. Money won’t take away the injury, but it sure can improve the quality of your child’s life.

In this article, I’d like to focus on the failure to observe signs of fetal distress and the failure to timely recognize the need for a C-section. Everyone should agree that the goal of obstetrical medicine is to deliver a baby without injury to either the mother or her baby. One of the methods used by the doctors is fetal monitoring. The tapes or strips that are printed out can be normal or abnormal, and they can show whether or not the baby is in fetal distress.

Fetal distress usually occurs when the baby is not getting enough oxygen. This causes the baby’s heart to beat abnormally, and these abnormal heartbeats are what show up on the fetal monitoring strips. If the doctor fails to take action quickly enough, the lack of oxygen can result in serious injury or death.

Fetal distress can occur for a number of reasons, but it has to be recognized quickly and dealt with. There are several ways to try to correct the baby’s breathing, but if that doesn’t work, the next option is to get the baby out.

When a doctor fails to diagnose fetal distress, or fails to take steps to correct it, or fails to deliver the baby before it suffers a horrible injury due to lack of oxygen, that’s medical malpractice.

If you’re injured in a crash involving a tractor trailer, it makes good sense to hire an experienced lawyer who understands the federal and state rules and regulations that trucking companies have to comply with, and who knows the right way to conduct an investigation.

In 2006, 385,000 large trucks were involved in traffic crashes in the United States.
One out of nine traffic fatalities in 2006 resulted from a collision involving a large truck.
A total of 4,995 people died.
(National Highway Traffic safety Administration)

Here are just a few examples of tractor trailer crashes in the last 10 days:

This is the first in a series of articles relating to fighting for your rights against a trucking company.

As a Delaware personal injury lawyer who handles car accident cases, I always tell my clients that the number 1 rule is to tell the truth. Sometimes, telling the truth is not enough if your medical records don't support what you're saying. Here's a typical example of what happens

On 12/16/09, actress Anne Hathaway was in a minor traffic accident in Los Angeles. Newspaper accounts of the accident say that she was not injured. It would be interesting to talk to her a week after the accident to see how she’s doing. Why? because it's not unusual to be in a car accident and think you’re okay. You tell the cops that you aren’t injured, and you refuse medical treatment. That night, the next day, or even a few days later, you begin to feel pain or soreness. You think to yourself that it’s normal to feel some pain - after all, you were just in an accident. You go about your normal routine. If you’re lucky, the pain goes away completely. In some cases, however, the pain lingers. Once again, you assume that it’s only a minor injury and that you’ll return to normal in the near future.

You continue to hurt, you complain about the pain to your spouse, and you still don’t see a doctor. After a few months, you finally realize that this isn’t going away, and you reluctantly call your doctor’s office to schedule an appointment. After the medical exam, the doctor tells you that you have cervical (neck) and lumbar (back) strain and sprain, and that you need physical therapy and drugs.

At some point you think about making a claim for your injuries, and you contact the other driver’s insurance company. The claims representative takes your statement over the phone, gets your medical records, and tells you that you waited such a long time to see your doctor that it appears the pain you’re complaining about is not related to the accident.

So what should you have done? As soon as you start to feel symptoms of pain or soreness, get checked out by your doctor. There’s no harm in playing it safe. Your own car insurance company will pay for the visit. If it turns out that your doctor says “take 2 aspirins and call me in the morning,” consider yourself very fortunate that you weren’t injured and you don’t have a personal injury claim. On the other hand, if your doctor prescribes pain killers and muscle relaxants, or prescribes physical therapy, you’ve helped your personal injury claim because you got medical attention early on and your medical records will relate the symptoms to the accident.

It’s great to be stoic and put off seeing a doctor following an accident. Unfortunately, this way of dealing with things could come back to haunt you later on when the insurance company accuses you of being dishonest.