Panama City Florida Injury Lawyer Blog

A New York Times headline caught my attention last week. It asked, "What is the value of a life?" As a lawyer who handles personal injury and deaths caused by someone else's carelessness, I often have to put a monetary value on life. It is very difficult to do. The first reaction to having that task is to sit back and think, "How can I equate a certain amount of money with all the things that comprised that person's life?" The New York Times article that compelled my attention went on to say that the value of a life depends on whatever government agency is considering it. But the general theme was that one way to measure the cost of a life is by the amount of money spent trying to save a life.

For example, the Department of Homeland Security spends a lot of money trying to prevent deaths from terrorism. The Department of Defense spends a huge amount trying to stop deaths from IEDs in Iraq and Afghanistan. The health department devotes money to preventing cancer deaths. In general, the government seems to value a life at between 6 and 9 million dollars.

Those are interesting measures, but in the law there are different standards for valuing a wrongful death, that is, one caused by an accident, medical or nursing home malpractice, or a dangerous product. In Alabama, the damages are punitive, so a jury there can award whatever sum it thinks should be sufficient to punish the conduct of the bad trucker or the careless doctor. Georgia puts a jury in the shoes of the deceased person to value the entire life from that person's perspective. Florida on the other hand imposes limits by defining specific elements of damage that can be awarded for wrongful death. Included in those are the emotional suffering of the family members due to the loss, medical and funeral expenses, loss of companionship and guidance to children, and the lost earnings that might have been expected to go to the family. Valuing a life for court cases is a complex process made no easier by the various laws that exist.

Plastic surgeries have risen in record numbers across the country and in Florida. Over 8 million cosmetic surgery procedures were performed in 2003 according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. Of those procedures, 7 million were minimally invasive, non-surgical in nature. The top procedures were Botox injections followed by chemical peels and microdermabrasion. In 2010, there were 13.1 million cosmetic procedures performed. That's more than a 49% increase in 7 years.

It's important for you to do your homework regardless of the type of surgery you plan to schedule. Understanding the full scope of the procedure, including risks and recovery time, is critical to establishing practical expectations and your satisfaction with the end result. It is appropriate for you to ask to see before and after photos of patients who've had the same cosmetic procedure.

Many cosmetic procedures are considered elective and are not covered by insurance. Be sure you review the financial responsibilities before you proceed. Your doctor can submit a summary of the procedures to your insurance company for approval and an estimate of what they will pay. Costs of procedures vary by doctor, but don't make a decision solely on cost. Make sure you select your doctor based on qualifications and experience and not by the discounts he or she offers.

Confirm the doctor you're considering is licensed to perform the surgery. In Florida, as well as many other states, online resources are available to research your physician. Many sources will also tell you if the physician holds professional liability coverage.

Not everyone is happy with their results. Check for complaints or any lawsuits that may have been filed against the doctor and the outcome. Understand, however, that an outcome less pleasing than you had hoped does not necessarily mean the doctor is guilty of medical malpractice. Doctors cannot guarantee a perfect cosmetic result. In general, to constitute malpractice, the doctor must have departed from an acceptable standard of care under the circumstances.

Pain after an auto accident is expected, especially if bones are broken and surgery is required. However, when the injury is to the muscles and connective tissues of the body, the accident victim expects the pain to go away within a few days. Sometimes it doesn't, so what is going on in those victims in whom pain lingers and becomes permanent? Frequently, the answer is fibromyalgia. The accident victim who has developed fibromyalgia usually experiences pain in multiple muscles throughout the body. It is not uncommon for the victim's family and friends and even some doctors, who are not well versed in trauma medicine, to question the truthfulness of the person in pain or to suspect the existence of a mental condition. Fibromyalgia, however, is real. It's manifestation of pain in precise areas of the body is so constant regardless of whom is complaining of the pain that charts showing these trigger points have been developed by neurologists and pain management doctors. While the underlying cause of fibromyalgia remains a mystery, most researchers agree that fibromyalgia is a disorder of central processing in which the accident victim experiences pain amplification due to abnormal sensory processing in the central nervous system.

According to Mayo Clinic staff, it is likely that genetic factors make some people more susceptible to developing the disorder after an accident or a stressful event and that once it develops they have increased sensitivity in the brain to pain signals. The brain's pain receptors seem to develop a memory of the pain and become more sensitive, in effect causing an overreaction to pain signals. Researchers have also concluded that the repeated nerve stimulation causes the brains of people with fibromyalgia to change. This involves an abnormal increase in neurotransmitter chemicals that signal pain. There, in fact, is the explanation for muscle pain that becomes permanent after an auto accident. Fortunately, there is hope.

If you want information about a website that can give you some help if you suffer from this pain, or if you want the names of doctors in this area who provide helpful treatment for this disorder, just call my office, and while you are at it, ask for a free copy of my DVD that answers accident victims' most frequently asked questions.

Should a claim always be made when medical malpractice occurs? Malpractice happens a lot in doctor's offices and hospitals. I get calls about it almost every week. Various government agencies estimate that many thousands of people die every year due to medical carelessness. Yet, a serious analysis has to occur before anyone should make a claim for it.

The first question is: can I prove that malpractice occurred? This is not as simple as it might seem. A bad result might indicate that malpractice was involved, but it doesn't necessarily indicate that it was. Doctors aren't guarantors of perfect care, just reasonable care under the circumstances. For a jury to find that a doctor was guilty of malpractice, it must decide that the doctor deviated from an acceptable level of care which is more or less defined as a range of care within which other practitioners of the same kind would have performed under the circumstances. Assuming that malpractice can be established using that definition, the second question is: Did the malpractice cause damage to the patient, or was the bad result caused by something else like, for instance, an infection or disease that was simply incurable even though the doctor tried.
If the malpractice was the legal cause of the damage, the third and final question in the analysis is this. Is the damage so bad that it warrants your making a claim against the doctor or hospital? It's important for you to have that question answered before you make the claim, because malpractice cases are expensive to investigate, prepare, and try. Be as sure as you can that the end result in a case will be worth your time and effort after the expenses of the case are deducted from a court award.

If all 3 questions can be answered in the positive, the case should proceed, because you should be compensated, and malpractice claims serve as a deterrent to further malpractice. You might save someone else from the same experience. On the other hand, if even one of the questions is answered with a "no," you would be wise to walk away and just be happy that you are alive.

Kenneth Feinberg, a Washington lawyer, was brought in during the summer to administer the 20 billion dollar fund that British Petroleum set up to compensate victims of the April oil spill from the Deepwater Horizon. Now, amid charges from the Attorney General for Louisiana and others that Feinberg is not acting independently of BP, we learn that of the 91,000 Gulf oil spill claims, just one has resulted in final payment being made. Furthermore, we now know that Feinberg's office approved that final payment of $10 million to one of BP's business partners without his office even inspecting the claim for merit. As he put it, "We never reviewed the claim; we honored the request of the parties to fund the claim." In other words, ten million of the fund set up by BP is gone to BP's business partner without any oversight whatsoever by Feinberg. In many people's minds, this makes Feinberg's administration of the fund suspect.

With that in mind, there are 3 ways to make claims to the fund now. First, victims can file for a quick one-time payment of five thousand dollars for individuals and twenty-five thousand for businesses. A release of all claims, except for future claims for bodily injury, must be signed. The person or business cannot make any further claim. The right to sue BP and other defendants will be waived. Signing a release is dangerous since the long term effects of the spill are largely unknown.

Other oil spills, including the one in Alaska from the Exxon Valdez, have proved that. Damages from submerged oil and damages to the seafood continue twenty years later. Second, it is possible for individuals and businesses to file for interim payments and to be paid if they can continue to show losses. Third, claimants can opt for a final settlement of all present and future damages, but to do that, they would have to sign a release. Again, that seems to be a dangerous thing to do in many cases, because if the long term effect of the oil isn't known, how can claimants compute future damages at this point?

If the claims fund administered by Feinberg disagrees with a victim's assessment, the victim can appeal to a 3-judge panel. But guess who picks the panel. Feinberg. The appeals process hasn't been used yet, so many questions remain about how it will be used. Dangers and pitfalls are associated with the signing of any release. The same is true of releasing BP when any option other than interim payment is selected. The required release contains language waiving the claimant's right to sue roughly 120 other possible defendants and even gives BP the right after a settlement to get all of its money back from the other companies and more in some cases. What small sum is Kenneth Feinberg being paid by BP for his administrative work? Only eight hundred fifty thousand dollars a month. Does this cause you to be suspicious of whatever he does?