Tennessee Injury Lawyer Blog

Yesterday, a KY nursing home nursing assistant was indicted on accounts of video voyeurism and adult abuse for recording nude video of one of the nursing home residents under her care. The western KY nursing home where this occurred was Dawson Pointe in Dawson Springs and had previously be cited by Kentucky state officials. The guilty nineteen-year-old nursing assistant recorded at least two videos on her cell phone prior to her arrest.

Continue reading "Nursing Home Sexual Abuse
Disturbing Trend in Tennessee, Neighboring States" »

Individuals who have had total hip replacement surgery involving the use of a Duron Cup, manufactured and distributed by Zimmer Holdings, Inc. may experience problems due to the failure of the device.

The Durom Cup is a metal alloy implant made from a single piece of material. The Durom Cup was used in approximately 13,000 hip replacement surgeries before it was widely discovered that there was an unacceptable fail rate. Around 5% of all surgeries using the Durom Cup resulted in complications and failures that caused patients to undergo further painful and costly surgeries. This is happening with some of our client in Tennessee and throughout the country.

In April, 2008, a prominent California Orthopedic Surgeon, Dr. Lawrence Dorr, issued a public warning after having complications following 14 of the 165 surgeries involving the Durom Cup. This warning prompted the Zimmer to investigate the hip replacement part and the packaging and instructions provided with the part.

Zimmer did not issue a recall on the product, but did stop selling the products in July, 2008. Zimmer claims that there is not a manufacturing or design defect, but will wait to reintroduce the product until it is able to develop more comprehensive instructions and product labeling.

At the Higgins firm, we represent individuals who are victims of faulty products and have suffered injuries. We offer free consultations to anyone who has had a hip replacement surgery and has developed complications due to the component parts used in the surgery. If you feel you or a loved one has been injured by a faulty product, please contact the Higgins Firm.

On December 31, 2008, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson recalled two lots of 50 mcg Duragesic pain patches due to potential tears in the product. If the product has a rip or tear, there is a potential for direct exposure to the powerful drug within the patch, fentanyl. Direct exposure to the fentanyl gel can result severe reactions up to and including a fatal overdose caused by the medication. Many patients throughout Tennessee and the United States received these potentially defective patches. Out Tennessee Law office has already received multiple calls with concerns.

As a result of the problems with fentanyl patches over recent years, there have been several multimillion dollars verdicts against the manufacturers in products liability cases. Products Liability law have developed to protect people from products that are flawed in either there design, development, or manufacture. Drug cases fall under the products liability umbrella because these case typically involve the defective manufacturing or defective design of the products or drugs that cause the injuries.

At the Higgins Firm, we handle cases and work with other nationally recognized firms across the country involving defective drugs and will fight for your rights. If you have been injured as a result of a leak or other problem with a duragesic pain patch, call Jim Higgins or speak to our staff.

Tennessee Law Blog is happy to report that, in a follow-up to an earlier TN law blog on defective product eye injuries caused by ReNu with MoistureLoc, the contact lens solution maker Bausch and Lomb has settle over 600 personal injury lawsuits to the tune of $250 million.

As discussed in another previous Tennessee Law Blog, injuries from the tainted contact lens solution were caused by a potentially blinding fungus present in the solution. The potential for fungal infection (Fusarium keratitis) was high, leading to a recall of the product. The CDC had confirmed 180 cases in 35 states as of September 2006. In Tennessee, one Tennessean had to have an eye removed, as did six other people in the U.S. To date, over 700 contact lens wearers have stepped forward with claims to have been exposed to the blinding fungal infection., some of whom have required corneal transplants to preserve vision in one or both eyes.

The culprit, keratitis, is so rare that doctors were at first puzzled by the seeming outbreak, which began in Hong Kong and reached Tennessee and other states by 2006. Eventually, the correlation was made between the potentially blinding infection and the new, multipurpose lens cleaner on the market, MoistureLoc, though the exact mechanics of why this one product caused this particular eye injury remain unclear.

Keratitis sufferers often complain of eye irritation that progresses to sudden searing pain. 2.3 million of our country’s 30 million soft contact lens wearers used MoistureLoc.

In the years since, Bausch & Lomb has marketed its older product, ReNu MultiPlus.

In Kentucky, Georgia, or Tennessee, if you have been injured by a defective consumer or medical product, contact the Higgins Firm for a fair, firm assessment of your legal situation. Contact our Nashville-based product liability lawyers online or toll-free at 800.705.2121.

Child victims of dog bites received national media attention this week with the injury of Steelers linebacker James Harrison. Harrison’s 2-year-old son, James Harrison III, spent six days in a children’s hospital after the family dog, a pit bull, bit the boy on the thigh. There appears to be no permanent muscle or nerve damage from the dog bite.

Also injured were the bitten boy’s mother and Harrison’s massage therapist. The latter’s dog bite injury required a medical visit and stitches.

The dog bite incident reportedly occurred when the dog, outside of its pen, became agitated by the boy’s crying. The mother and massage therapist were injured when attempted to remove the attacking dog from the child. According to Harrison, the pit bull had not attacked before.

The pit bull, named Patron, was taken to Animal Control where the animal will be kept in quarantine for 10 days and then put down. Harrison wishes for the pit bull to instead be spared and find a new home with security sufficient to prevent the dog from attacking.

Harrison, famous for his two Super Bowl wins since being drafted to the Steelers in 2002, made news outside the sports arena when he refused to visit the White House with the rest of his Super Bowl XLIII-winning teammates.

Over 1,000 U.S. emergency room annually are from dog bites. Severe dog bites can require weeks of costly hospital treatment and worked missed. Bites on the face or hands or legs can require sutures (stitches) and can leave scars.

If a dog bite injury has left you facing outrageous medical bills or has affected the quality of life of you or another and would like to seek compensation, contact the Higgins Firm's Dog Bite Division of our Nashville, TN personal injury law offices.

Over the past few months, our Nashville law office has had an large increase in wage and hour cases throughout Tennessee. I do not know if it is a product of the current economy or people are just tired of being mistreated. Regardless, it is unfortunate but it is often the case the Tennessee employers try to increase their profit by cheating Tennesseans out of their wages.

One common scheme we are seeing recently are having people clock out of work while they are still required to be on the premises. Often the company will have the worker clock out and come to a mandatory office meeting. Although this may only be a few dollars for the individual employee it adds up to a significant amount of money that the employer is taking from their workers.

We are also seeing significant number of misclassification cases. Put simply, the TN employer gives a regular employee a supervisor or manager title so they do not have to pay overtime. The problem arises when the employee has no manager duties.

For instance, in one recent case our Nashville law office pursued almost every employee at a fast food restaurant was called an "assistant manager" and paid a salary. The employees worked in excess of 40 hours a week but received no overtime because of these bogus titles. Fortunately, our employment lawyers were able to recover a significant amount of lost wages for these workers. Some of the workers had been losing their overtime for several years of unpaid overtime, so the lost pay they recovered was significant.

If you have an overtime pay or other employment law question, please feel free to contact our Tennessee workplace law office.

In a follow-up to a Tennessee Law Blog’s wage and hour reporting last July (Unpaid Wages and Unrecorded Hours Subject of Local Nashville, TN Car Wash Lawsuit), I and my fellow TN employment attorneys at the Higgins Firm are glad to announce a $130,000 settlement between Shur-Brite Hi-Speed Car Wash and 120 of its current and former Tennessee wage employees.

Shur-Brite, which has operated in Tennessee for three decades, recently got into trouble with federal law on their wage and hour practices. Allegations included various violations of workplace law, but the main abuse was time card violations. Workers were forced to clock out when they were not actively working. As Tennessee Law Blog previously reported:

... the wage and hour lawsuit alleges that Shur-Brite High Speed Car Wash owners knowingly, and illegally, forced employees to clock out when there were no cars to wash... [On] slow days, workers would be forced to clock out as often as ten times during the day. Many workers would be at the car wash site for over 40 hours a week but only get paid for 15 at Tennessee’s minimum wage of $5.85 an hour. Some workers put in twelve-hour days hoping to get paid for eight. Many times it was unclear to workers whether they were on or off the clock ...

If an employer pays a wage, then that wage must apply for the time worked. Work is not simply the active performance of duties, as one California wage and hour lawsuit against Costco is teaching managers who would force workers to clock out before they were free to leave.

If your employer requires that you remain on premises or take a mandatory training, these hours must be recorded and count towards overtime. You have the right to be paid for the time you work, and federal and Tennessee employment law offers means of recovering unpaid wages. National and state employment laws overrule most verbal or written agreements you may have made with your Tennessee employer regarding wages and overtime. In other words, just because you agree to not be paid overtime does not mean that your employer is freed from accurately recording your hours or paying you for overtime.

Unfair wage payments and timecard abuses against employees often occur against those who are the most desperate and needy. This is because these employers feel they can pay unfair wages to employees who are most need a fair wage. Fortunately, a Tennessee lawyer can often keep confidential clients' reports of workplace abuses or bring together multiple workers at a store, factory, or other business in a class action wage and hour lawsuit.

If your Kentucky, Georgia, or Tennessee employer frequently changes your schedule to prevent paying you overtime or does not pay you for time that you are required to be on-site, then you should speak with a Higgins Firm wage and hour attorney about a possible wage and hour lawsuit. Typical settlement and court awards include backpay for unpaid wages, including overtime, liquidated damages, and attorney’s fees. Filing a wage and hour lawsuit with a qualified employment law attorney can help correct many unfair workplace practices and help prevent retaliation.

Costco employees have filed a unpaid wages lawsuit in California stating the company had repeatedly violated the state’s wage and labor law. Costco faces allegations similar to those Tennessee Law Blog reported last year in the nationwide unpaid overtime lawsuits against Wal-Mart stores. Specifically, Costco has allegedly required employees to work off the clock by locking employees in the store after their shifts and not paying them for this time or overtime as required under state employment laws.

Unlike earlier Wal-Mart lawsuits, Costco has apparently claimed that keeping employees after they clocked out was for security reasons. Apparently managers forced employees to remain after their shifts while they performed closing tasks, such as removing valuables from display cases and emptying cash registers. Costco employees were unpaid for this time off-the-clock during which they were not permitted to leave.

Tennessee labor law requires employees be paid for their time, including required training and, in some cases, travel time. If something similar to what California Costco employees faced is happening at your Tennessee place of employment, you may have the opportunity to recover unpaid wages under Tennessee's wage and hour law.

In other employment law news, drugmaker Wyeth faces False Claims Act penalties for overcharging Medicaid for Protonix, a popular stomach acid drug. Two whistleblower lawsuits have been joined by the U.S. Justice Department for recoveries and penalties in the millions of dollars.

From 2000 and 2006, according to court papers, Wyeth offered dramatic discounts (up to a 94% discount) to thousands of hospitals nationwide for its stomach acid drug that weren’t offered to state Medicaid programs. By doing so, the whistleblower lawsuits and federal government claim, Wyeth avoided hundreds of millions of dollars of rebates that would have cut costs to the program for the poor--prescription costs that state and federal taxes had to pay. Simply put, Medicaid programs in Tennessee and throughout the U.S. were forced to pay significantly more for their Wyeth drugs than they should have. These overcharges violate Medicaid programs’ “best price reporting requirements” and can be recovered under False Claims law.

In addition to Tennessee, the other states joining the lawsuit are (alphabetically) California, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New York, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

In this economy and era of big pharmaceuticals and contractors working with the military and disaster recovery, False Claims law needs greater qui tam awards to protect our federal and Tennessee tax moneys.

For unpaid overtime, whistleblower actions, and other Tennessee workplace legal issues, visit Higgins Firm’s workplace lawyers’ Tennessee Employment Law pages. To speak directly with an employment lawyer about a potential Tennessee workplace lawsuit, contact our Nashville, TN law offices.

Just a couple of years ago, a company called MuscleTech produced dietary supplements with ephedra that was believed to have caused strokes, heart attacks and death. That company went into bankruptcy and put new dietary supplements on the market under known as Hydroxycut. Now it appears that this new Hydroxcut product may be just as dangerous as the old product.

The FDA has received 23 incident reports of liver damage in users of Hydroxycut supplements. These injuries include jaundice, liver damage, and even liver transplant. One reported case involves a 19-year-old who died as a result of the associated liver damage. Symptoms of serious liver disease include jaundice (yellowing of the skin or whites of the eyes) and brown urine.

Currently the FDA has recalled the following products:

Hydroxycut Regular Rapid Release Caplets
Hydroxycut Caffeine-Free Rapid Release Caplets
Hydroxycut Hardcore Liquid Capsules
Hydroxycut Max Liquid Capsules
Hydroxycut Regular Drink Packets
Hydroxycut Caffeine-Free Drink Packets
Hydroxycut Hardcore Drink Packets (Ignition Stix)
Hydroxycut Max Drink Packets
Hydroxycut Liquid Shots
Hydroxycut Hardcore RTDs (Ready-to-Drink)
Hydroxycut Max Aqua Shed
Hydroxycut 24
Hydroxycut Carb Control
Hydroxycut Natural

Even you have taken any of these products and believe you have a claim please feel free to contact our Tennessee Legal Office. You can also contact us toll free at 1-800-705-2121.

The Tennessee Supreme Court has established that a claim for negligent infliction of emotional distress is a separate stand alone cause of action. Okay, so what does that mean and what is the big deal? Generally, each insurance policy has a limit of coverage for each person. If someone is killed in a car wreck the limit for the death may just be $100,000.00 under the insurance. Obviously, if you have lost the family wage earner the family will need all the financial help they can get. As such, it is important to obtain the full recovery under the insurance policies. This seperate cause of action is often a way to increase the recovery.

One way we have been able to increase the policy coverage is under the now recognized separated claim . Specifically, if a person witnesses a tragedy involving a loved one they may be able to recover additional compensation for seeing that tragic loss. This is obviously not going to make up for any emotional loss but it may help recover some of the financial hardship. I know that if something happened to me i want my family to get all they can to help them through life without me.

I have now had a couple of wrongful death cases where we were able to double the financial recovery under this law. It is not available in every Tennessee wrongful death or serious injury case but it is important to look for it. If you have questions about this newly recognized separate claim feel free to give my Tennessee Law Office a call.

Today marks a critical point in the year, a date that should make us as a Tennesseans and as U.S. citizens not simply ashamed but motivated to action. April 28 (known as Equal Pay Day) marks the point into the year a woman would have to work to in order to catch up with her male counterpart's pay in 2008.

Large steps in closing the pay disparity between man and women have been made since the Equal Pay Act of 1963, which made it illegal for employers to pay women less than men for equal work. And Tennessee lawmakers took a strong step forward in 2004 with The Equal Pay Remedies and Enforcement Act that put teeth in Tennessee discrimination law. Then, in January this year, even further progress was made with the The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. This law, designed to reduce employers' ability to continue unfair, sex-based discriminatory pay practices, expanded the statute of limitations and closed the legal loophole that allowed employers to continue discriminatory pay practices if previously they haven’t been caught.

Continue reading "Nondiscriminatory Pay – After Ledbetter,
the Next Steps to Stopping Sex-Based Pay Discrimination" »

Following up to earlier Tennessee Law Blogs' call to arms: Victory!

Despite the best efforts (and money) of nursing home industry lobbyists, the measure to place limits on nursing home abuse/neglect cases died in the Tennessee House of Representatives today in subcommittee thanks to elected officials like Rep. Henry Fincher of Cookeville who voted against what he’s called the "Kill Old People Cheap Act."

A companion bill, the lovechild of Senate Speaker Ron Ramsey of Blountville, TN, still awaits vote by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The Tennessee State bill, if passed, would dictate the amount a jury can compensate victims of TN nursing home abuse and neglect. The nursing home industry mobilized its Tennessee nurses and other employees by suggesting that nursing home attorneys’ sole purpose is to slander their profession. Instead, what the bill would allow, if passed, is Tennessee nursing homes to continue understaffing their long-term care facilities, which studies have found time and again is the number one cause of neglect and preventable injury in nursing home care.

Sufficient nursing home care should never take second seat to nursing home profits as Tennessee Law Blog has warned of in its article, Nursing Home Ownership May Determine Abuse. Understaffing is one suggested reason for TN nursing homes statewide poor conditions. Before proposing this bill again, our state representatives who voted yeah should look the children of Linda Darlene Carter in the eyes and say what dollar value their mother’s death in a TN nursing home by negligent dehydration is worth x amount of dollars, and not a penny more.

If your loved in a Tennessee nursing home has suffered abuse or injury from neglect, call (615) 353-0930 or fill out our nursing home attorney form for a free initial consultation with myself or another Higgins Law Firm Nashville, TN lawyer.