A Washington Post poll last week found that slots on slots in Maryland is virtually a done deal. A whopping 62% of likely voters support what will bring as many as 15,000 slot machines to Maryland.
Is this a good thing? A bad thing? My opinion: I have absolutely no idea.
Nicholas W. Browning, the Baltimore County 16 year-old boy accused of killing his family, including his father who was a well respected Towson lawyer with Royston, Mueller, McLean & Reid, has pleaded guilty to four counts of first-degree murder in Baltimore County Circuit Court. Under the plea, Browning will face a maximum of two consecutive life sentences and two concurrent life sentences which will include the possibility of parole. Baltimore County Circuit Court Judge Thomas J. Bollinger Sr. will sentence Browning on December 2nd .
David B. Irwin, a Towson lawyer with Irwin, Green & Dexter, who has been serving as a spokesman for Nicholas Browning’s paternal grandmother, maternal grandfather and maternal aunt and uncle, said the family understands “the need for punishment in a tragic situation,” but that they “want Nick to be safe and get whatever treatment is available.”
What an awful spot the survivors of that family have been placed in by this tragedy. Judge Bollinger has a tough call to make as well. What is an appropriate sentence for a boy who obviously needed psychiatric help? What if he defeats the demons in his mind at a young age? Does he stay in prison for the rest of his life for something he did when he was 16? Then again, he coldly killed his entire family and coolly tried to cover it up, going to the mall and playing video games the next day. Should you ever be able to enjoy freedom again after killing your parents and your two younger brothers? It causes me angst just thinking about the competing interests in this case; I can’t imagine having to make the call.
Urinary stress incontinence is a common problem for women - some 13 million of them in this country alone - particularly after childbirth and as they age. There are diaper-like products on the market for such women, but many choose to medically correct the problem so they no longer have this inconvenient embarrassment in their life. Imagine their horror when the very procedure meant to help them ends up harming them far worse than the original incontinence. This is what has happened to many women who had the Mentor ObTape Vaginal Sling surgically inserted.
Mentor is a California company that manufactured an ObTape Vaginal Sling, an implanted device that is designed to replace eroded or weakened muscles in the urethra and support the bladder. The problems occur because the material the sling is made of doesn’t allow the tissue where the sling is attached to heal; the material itself prevents the needed nutrients and oxygen from reaching the tissue. Women have suffered infection, scarring, painful intercourse, vaginal discharge, pain, mesh extrusions, abscess, and return of the very condition meant to be rectified by this device – urinary stress incontinence. The complications from the Mentor ObTape Vaginal Sling often required patients to undergo surgery and, unfortunately, often serious and permanent injuries. Mentor’s ObTape Vagina Sling came on the market in 2003, and in less than 3 years was taken off the market. Mentor never stepped up and issued a recall; Mentor simply stopped marketing the Ob Tape in March, 2006, but it never actually recalled the product – Mentor just let it die a slow death.
In October, 2006, the Journal of Urology reported on a study which looked at 67 women who had been implanted with the Mentor ObTape Vaginal Sling. More than 13% developed vaginal extrusions. Others had chronic vaginal discharge, and one patient developed an abscess that led to complications. The most telling part of the study was that none of the control group of 56 women who used another type of vaginal sling experienced the complications seen with the Mentor ObTape Vaginal Sling.
This Mentor ObTape Vaginal Sling tried a new innovative design, which is commendable, but you cannot put a product on the market without adequate testing. Apparently, the ObTape Vaginal Sling pushed into and through the vaginal wall causing tearing, cutting, and sometimes permanent erosion of the vaginal tissues.
ObTape lawyers intend to argue that although Mentor won approval of ObTape from the FDA because it was "substantially equivalent" to slings already on the market, the ObTabe Sling is actually a very different product grounds ObTape was a new and unique product. But the Mentor ObTape Vaginal Sling was different because vaginal slings had historically been made with a mesh design, allowing the sling to breathe and get nutrients to the body’s tissue.
Mentor ObTape Vaginal Sling lawyers will argue to consolidate for discovery purposes the 22 filed Mentor ObTape Vaginal Sling lawsuits in an MDL (basically a class action for discovery purposes). Oral arguments will be held in late November in Charleston, South Carolina.
Continue reading " Mentor ObTape Vaginal Sling Lawsuits " »
The Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog today had a post on the chances of the Democrats getting to 60 senators, discussing the implications on Wyeth v. Levine and Riegel v. Medtronic. One of the roadblocks to 60 was Ted Stevens, a senator from Alaska for the last 40 years.
Today, a jury has found Senator Stevens guilty on all seven counts of making false statements on Senate disclosure forms, presumably ceding the race to Democratic challenger, Mark Begich.
I do not care whether you a Democrat or a Republican or whether you think Stevens was innocent or guilty. It is sad to see a man destroy his reputation at 84 years of age. He is not going to jail but this is now the first line entry in his biography. His defense to the case, including the claim that someone had "lent" him a chair for seven years, had all of the earmarks of an arrogance we have not seen since... well, since Roger Clemens.
Over 17 months after the death of Garrett County’s only district court judge, Judge Ralph Burnett, Garrett County has a new judge. Governor O’Malley has selected Leonard Eiswert, a lawyer with Eiswet, Janes & Kepple in Oakland, Maryland.
Judge Eiswet was a founding partner of Eiswet, Janes & Kepple in 1979. Before that he was a prosecutor in Baltimore and later in Garrett County. He graduated from University of Baltimore School of Law and past president of the Garrett County Bar Association.
To the chagrin of Allegany County district court judges that have been traveling to Garrett County to sit in the vacant seat, this has been a long road. Judge Eiswert was not among the four original applicants for the judicial post created by Judge Ralph Burnett’s May 2007 death. The position was readvertised this summer after Governor O’Malley requested three applicants to choose from and the Judicial Nomination Commission found only two were qualified.
Related Story
The Garrett County Judical Vacancy
There have been 32 fatal car accidents in Anne Arundel County as of around 3:00 p.m on Saturday. Of these fatal accidents, 16 involved alcohol. I cannot remember the exact number but there have been over 1,100 drunk driving arrests in 2008 in Anne Arundel County.
How do I know this? It is posted outside of the police station in Millersville that I drove by on Saturday while taking one of my sons to a pumpkin patch. Seeing those numbers got me to thinking: if the numbers for everyone's hometown was the screensaver on the work computers of every American, we would save at least 4,000 lives in this country a year.
Of course, I'm completely making that number up. But don't you think that this would reduce drunk driving deaths by at least 33%? In 2007, an approximately 12,998 people died in alcohol-impaired traffic crashes involving a driver with a BAC .08 or higher. These deaths constituted 31.7 percent of the 41,059 total motor vehicle accident fatalities in the United States in 2007. According, if we could reduce drunk driving fatal accident by a third, we would save over 4,000 lives.
The Maryland Daily Record reports that federal prosecutors have filed a civil lawsuit against a Navy commander from Severna Park who was granted a Purple Heart and was compensated for a partial permanent disability for injuries he claimed he received when a plane crashed into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. This man received $331,000 from the Victim Compensation Fund.
Prosecutors claim he had a pre-existing injury, apparently describing his injuries using the same language that a doctor used to diagnose him three years earlier. I have less of a problem with this than I do with the fact that he ran the New York City marathon in under four hours (and played basketball and lacrosse) two months after the 9/11 attacks.
The Daily Record article notes that government attorneys are looking to seize Coughlin's $1 million house, his Mercedes-Benz and minivan because he used money from the victims' fund to get them. What an awful image.
Very depressing story. This guy was a Navy Commander. I hope it is not true.
Dear Maryland Daily Record Editor:
Unless they hail from Hollywood, I don’t expect lawyers to be savvy enough to have had enough foresight not to be all smiles on an article about bankruptcy, but I think your paper could have been more thoughtful. (Maryland Lawyer cover story, “The Business of Bankruptcy Law,” October 6, 2008)
In hindsight, I am sure these attorneys did not want to appear gleeful about the fact that the misfortune of others has caused their business to skyrocket.
If ever there was a cause for the photographer to tell their subjects to NOT to smile, it was for the picture that accompanied an article about bankruptcy.
This editorial was written by Mike Henderson with the Baltimore Metro Chapter of Associated Builders and Contractors. Good for Mr. Henderson for writing this editorial. The Maryland Daily Record also deserves credit for publishing this editorial. Mike got it right; the Daily Record and these lawyers got it wrong. Everyone agrees, we can all move on.
A friend of mine was telling his much younger brother recently that it would help him stay out of trouble if he would get good grades. He told him "everything goes down better with good grades."
Right now, lawyers - most notably personal injury lawyers - are the kids with bad grades. Anything we do either individually or as a group that is questionable is immediately given scrutiny. Every lawyer should be keeping this in mind.
The Maryland Daily Record reports that the Maryland Court of Appeals will hear a challenge to Maryland’s statutory cap on non-economic damages involving a lead paint case in Baltimore City.
I think it is interesting the Maryland high court granted cert in this case. I'm not optimistic. But boy would the landscape flip here if the Maryland Court of Appeals agrees these caps are unjust under Maryland's Constitution.
Related Posts
Seroquel is the top selling antipsychotic drug in the United States. Seroquel is the eighth best-selling drug in the world, with more than $4 billion in sales last year.
But attorney generals in Pennsylvania, Montana and Arkansas contend that Seroquel's rise was the result of an illegal marketing campaign designed to promote the powerful drug for unapproved uses, including to some of our most vulnerable: children and the elderly with dementia. Moreover, Seroquel has been linked with a host of health problems, including diabetes and pancreatitis. As a result, there are over 10,000 plaintiffs in a Seroquel class-action lawsuit.
With all of these Seroquel lawsuits, how has Seroquel stayed on the market? In addition to the obvious - $4 billion a year in annual revenue can buy up a lot of Seroquel-related diabetes and pancreatitis settlements. Dr. Robert Rosenheck, a psychiatry professor at Yale, has the answer: "You had 10 to 15 years of marketing in which the companies controlled the journal publications, controlled the speakers’ bureaus, controlled the dinners, controlled the patient advocacy groups, all of which communicated these drugs were a breakthrough. But there was little independent research."
For the millions of people on Seroquel, there has been “little independent research” of the drug. This is just plain frightening, right?
I frequently get an email that is some version of this one:
Hello Professor Miller,
It's [name withheld], and I took Sports Law from you (really learned a lot by the way). Anyway, the reason, for my [voicemail], and why I'm writing is because I have a friend who has a problem. He purchased what I believed was an SUV, brand new in 2006. A few months ago it was stolen and vandalized. The police were eventually able to recover it, but it was totaled. According to my friend the blue book values the car at a certain amount, but the insurance company is not willing to pay him anything near the blue book value of the car. The more time passes the more the value decreases. My friend would like to recover the fair value of his vehicle, and would like to know what his recovery rights are. I am sure you are incredibly busy, but my friend also wanted me to refer him to someone I trusted and was an expert in insurance law.
If time is an issue, do you perhaps have someone whom you might recommend?
My friend's name is: [name and number withheld]
Thanks!
The reality is that most lawyers - including me - are not going to handle property damage or total loss diminished value cases. We do, however, offer on our website tips for people handling property damage claims without a lawyer (click on the link for article)
P.G. County District Court has a new rules on postponements effective October 1, 2008.
This signals the end of automatic automatic postponements in P.G. County. This is a blessing for clients and a curse for some disorganized personal injury lawyers. Criminal lawyers in P.G. County are very upset for reasons that I do not fully understand because our lawyers do not handle criminal cases.
