Pain Category Archives — DC Medical Malpractice & Patient Safety Blog Published by Washington, D.C. Personal Injury Lawyers

November 27, 2022

College sports organization prevails in an early, difficult case on head injuries

Armchair quarterbacks of the legal kind have raced onto the field, arguing that a Los Angeles jury verdict will help shield the National Collegiate Athletic Association from a potential avalanche of claims asserting the group did too little to protect young players from debilitation and death due to head trauma.

Maybe, maybe not.

Jurors rejected the case seeking $55 million from the NCAA, accusing the body that oversees collegiate athletics of failing to safeguard Matthew Gee, a University of Southern California linebacker on the 1990 Rose Bowl-winning squad.

November 22, 2022

Walmart, with $3.1 billion plan, joins big pharmacies in settling opioid suits

by Patrick A. Malone

Walmart has offered to pay $3.1 billion to settle thousands of lawsuits filed against the deep-pocketed retailing giant, accusing it of complicity through its nationwide pharmacy operations in the lethal opioid abuse and overdose crisis.

The Bentonville, Ark., -based company insists it committed no wrong and the states, counties, cities, Indian tribes, and others who sued Walmart said it did not have as large a part as other pharmacy chains in inundating the country with powerful, prescribed painkillers.

Still, Walmart joins CVS and Walgreens in settling rather than confronting those who have found sustained success in seeking justice in the civil system, various news organizations have reported.

November 8, 2022

Nation’s biggest drug stores seek to settle opioid suits for $10 billion

by Patrick A. Malone

While critics keep throwing up a false narrative about “ambulance chasing,” self-enriching lawyers, their labors and the civil legal system have proven yet again their effectiveness in wringing financial justice for those harmed by health care giants.

The nation’s largest pharmacy chains have tentatively agreed to pay $10 billion in settlements for dispensing an avalanche of addictive, debilitating, and deadly prescription painkillers.

CVS and Walgreens, which had been among the staunchest holdouts in battling opioid litigation, both defended their business practices and denied any wrongdoing. They blamed doctors for excessive prescribing of powerful opioid drugs, which, federal officials say, fueled an abuse and overdose crisis that is worsening and killed more than 100,000 Americans last year.

October 11, 2022

Pro sports show seamy sides in mistreating women and head trauma

by Patrick A. Malone

While fans may wax poetic about how sports show humanity at its finest, the grim and even sleazy aspects of U.S. games also have been on full display in recent days.

The poohbahs of two of the nation’s most popular pastimes have acted poorly and spoken loudly as to how, maybe they don’t really give a whit about players’ health and well-being, permitting perversity and demeaning behaviors to flourish in women’s soccer and brutality and an almost willful medical blindness to rise anew in pro football for head trauma.

What are parents supposed to tell their kids about such sports “role models?”

September 2, 2022

Don’t get in an injury pickle by overdoing trendy games

by Patrick A. Malone

The newly familiar thwack, pop, and crack of the pastime of pickleball, alas, is increasingly accompanied by some other sounds — the moans and groans of picklers who find themselves with injuries that can be more than annoying for older aficionados of this trendy sport.

Noe Sariban, a pickleball instructor, former pro player, and a physical therapist who markets himself as the Pickleball Doctor, told the New York Times about the rising list of injuries he sees regularly from a game that is played in a constrained space and purports to offer a less-strenuous alternative for those who can’t quite cover an expansive court any more in other racket sports:

“Achilles’ strains or tears, shoulder problems, rotator cuff injuries, lower back problems such as disc injuries, muscle strains …”

August 23, 2022

3 giant drug store chains hit with $650-million judgment for opioid harms

by Patrick A. Malone

CVS, Walgreens, and Walmart are getting expensive lessons about corporate responsibility in filling prescriptions, as federal courts in San Francisco and Cleveland separately have faulted the companies for inundating communities with staggering quantities of addictive painkillers.

Those drugs caused such great harm that the three major drug chains must pay two Ohio Counties $650.5 million, a judge has decided.

The county governments told U.S. Judge Dan A. Polster — before whom has been consolidated thousands of lawsuits from states, counties, cities, other local governments, and Indian tribes — that they estimate they and their residents have suffered $3 billion in damages due to the opioid abuse and drug overdose crisis. A November jury verdict in favor of the two Ohio counties already faulted the pharmacy chains for continuing “to dispense mass quantities of prescription painkillers over the years while ignoring flagrant signs that the pills were being abused,” the New York Times reported.

August 19, 2022

Beware of heat and head trauma as young athletes prepare for fall sports

by Patrick A. Malone

Even before the school bells ring to bring kids back to classes, young athletes have taken to steamy fields and other facilities for fall training — making this an ideal time to remind coaches, trainers, players, and parents to ensure important steps are taken for safety’s sake.

While injury prevention of all kinds must be paramount in school sports — programs that must focus on young folks’ recreation and enjoyment as much as competition — two problems persist and require great diligence as players ramp up their conditioning: heat injury and head trauma.

Susan Yeargin, an associate professor of athletic training at the University of South Carolina and co-author of the National Athletic Trainers Association’s position statement on heat illness, told the Washington Post that it takes all people, but especially younger players, time to adjust to the heat and humidity of late summer and early fall:

August 9, 2022

With 350 lawsuits filed, hospital now can’t ignore outcry over orthopedist

by Patrick A. Malone

The nurses complained, and so did a handful of doctors. The patients howled. Yet, for years, administrators at a Florida hospital ignored the repeated alarms, critics say.

Now, 350 lawsuits have been filed and 100 more are expected, all asserting that Dr. Richard David Heekin, a seasoned orthopedist, suffered from a progressively debilitating, rare, neurologic condition that significantly impaired his capacity to perform what should have been common, uncomplicated knee and hip replacements, putting patients in harm’s way, NBC News reported.

Instead, during his flawed procedures, bones fractured, tendons ruptured, and nerves were severed. Patients required costly, painful, and unnecessary revision surgeries.

August 3, 2022

Big Pharma’s rough summer could be a boon for struggling patients

by Patrick A. Malone

Big Pharma has run into a rare rough summer — and that could be positive news for all the rest of us regular folks. Just how? Consider:

One of the world’s largest makers of prescription medications — which also is one of several pharma titans implicated in the record-breaking opioid abuse and drug overdose crisis, has agreed to settle for up to $4.5 billion with more than 2,500 local governments, states and tribes.
In a separate but related deal, generic drug maker Allergan has agreed to settle its lawsuits with those same parties for $2.37 billion.

July 8, 2022

A posthumous diagnosis forces soccer to reconsider risk of head harms

by Patrick A. Malone

In 2015, public attention galvanized around the significant risks of head trauma and the sport of football with the disclosure that Andre Waters, 44, a hard-hitting, onetime Philadelphia Eagles player, had been diagnosed after his suicide with chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE.

Has soccer — one of the most popular pastimes on the planet and a dominant game of U.S. suburban life — also hit its day of reckoning for head injuries? The issue has been brought to the fore with the revelations that Scott Vermillion, 44, a onetime soccer pro, has been posthumously diagnosed with CTE, the degenerative brain disease “linked to symptoms like memory loss, depression and aggressive or impulsive behavior,” the New York Times reported, adding:

“The diagnosis gave Vermillion the grave distinction of being the first American professional soccer player with a public case of CTE. It was a solemn milestone, too, for MLS, a league that has, even in its young history, seen the consequences of the type of brain injuries more commonly associated with collision sports like football, boxing and hockey. For soccer as a whole, the finding will add another note to a small but growing chorus of concern about the health risks of playing the world’s most popular game. ‘Soccer is clearly a risk for CTE — not as much as football, but clearly a risk,’ said Dr. Ann McKee, the director of the CTE Center at Boston University.”