Yesterday our office received a call from a client involved in the March 15, 2008, collapse of a crane at a construction project on East 51st Street in Manhattan. The news that another crane had collapsed when the top of the crane on an East 91st Street construction site had snapped off, crashed into a building across the street and killed two construction workers had hit our client personally; he had received a telephone call from a crane operator that he knew from his work that identified the crane operator who died in the latest collapse as a friend of our client. Our client felt like he had lost a member of his family. (more…)

For several years the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has been reviewing a set of guidelines proposed in 2004 for advertising medical devices. Now, a television advertisement for a heart stent, metal mesh devices that are used to prop open arteries after they have been cleared of blockages, has been scrutinized and attacked in an op-ed article for failing to adequately warn consumers about the potential dangers of receiving a stent, including a ruptured coronary artery. The ad does warn of heart attack and stroke. (more…)

There are an increasing number of girls playing sports, such as soccer and basketball, but with this growing statistic comes an increase in the number of girls and young women sustaining sports related injuries such as anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) knee tears. Studies conclude that in sports such as soccer, basketball and gymnastics, girl athletes rupture their ACL at a rate of five times that of male athletes.  This orthopedic injury is very debilitating and can disrupt one’s every day life in the short-term and has serious long term consequences as well. (more…)

Part 2 of this topic discusses new legislation regarding dangerous drugs, defective toys and sexual predators using the internet to prowl and prey. The information herein is set forth in press releases issued by the governor’s office. Proposed legislation designed to protect patients from medical malpractice was discussed in Part 1 of this blog. (more…)

Last week was a busy week for New York’s Governor David A. Paterson on issues often written about in this blog – medical malpractice, dangerous drugs, defective toys and sexual predators using the internet. Some bills were signed, others introduced. The most ambitious of these was on the medical malpractice front, Governor Paterson proposed legislation that offers more transparency for patients and tougher discipline for physicians; enhanced infection control requirements will facilitate the prevention of and response to infectious disease transmissions. Part 1 will discuss this legislation, Part 2 the others. The information herein is set forth in press releases issued by the governor’s office. (more…)

In the event that the Supreme Court applies the federal doctrine of preemption to permit the pharmaceutical industry to avoid accountability for the harm dangerous drugs cause, the only remedy would be for Congress to pass a law expressly stating that preemption does not preclude state court lawsuits for compensation. And that, hopefully, is the goal of the process engaged in by Chairman Rep. Henry A. Waxman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform of the U.S. House of Representatives this past Wednesday, May 14, 2008. Similarly, Reps. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) and Waxman (D-Calif.) have drafted legislation, the Medical Device Safety Act of 2008, to ensure federal law does not preempt state law when people harmed by medical devices sue. (more…)

A fatal car accident involving students driving off of school grounds during lunch period has again focused attention on whether “open campuses” are a concept that should be ended. Following a crash on April 10, 2008 in which two West Hempstead High School students were killed and another seriously injured, New York State Assemblyman Michael Gianaris (D-Queens) renewed his call to enact his bill that would ban all school districts in the state from permitting students to leave campus in vehicles during school hours. (more…)

In response to toy safety concerns raised during the summer of 2007 and the record number of unsafe toys recalled last year (and doubtlessly a number of product liability lawsuits), the U.S. Toy Industry Association (TIA) and the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) have formed the Toy Safety Coordination Initiative, a developing program that is designed to improve the safety of toys sold in American and to rebuild consumer confidence in the safety of toys in the American marketplace. The purpose of the initiative may be two-fold: to increase toys’ safety and to head-off stricter federal and state laws. The program has three components: (more…)

A feature article in the March/April 2007 issue of the Columbia Journalism Review discusses and labels as an “epidemic” the pervasive role hospitals play in producing “feel good” stories that are essentially advertisements for themselves and feeding the stories to television stations that run the stories as purported “health news” on their local TV news programs. The stories chosen tend to promote expensive specialties and procedures like bariatric surgery for obesity and gamma knife surgery for brain cancer at the expense of stories about less profitable diagnoses, like AIDS or pneumonia, care for the uninsured, or critical stories such as hospital infection rates, medical mistakes or poor care. (more…)

Last week, April 28 – May 2, 2008, was New York City’s 4th annual Construction Safety Week, the purpose of which is to “advance safe construction practices”. Seminars were offered in topics such as “Scaffold Safety: Keeping Workers Safe on the Job”, (held by the NYC Department of Buildings in conjunction with the Latin American Workers Project), “Performing Safe Excavations”, “Safety First: Urban Demolition”, “Crane Safety: New Regulations You Must Know” and “Safe Concrete Operations, Design, Methods and Regulations.” (more…)