Tennessee Law Blog

Nursing home abuse, as readers of the Tennessee Law Blog know, is a too-common tragedy in our great country and has its source in nursing homes neglecting not just their patients but their staff and quality of service. The greatest deterrent to nursing home abuse has always been the threat that owners have felt of financial repercussions that a nursing home’s abuse or negligent will bring if pursued by a personal injury attorney. Tennessee nursing home regulators, underfunded and understaffed, cannot provide the security that fear of an experienced nursing home abuse lawyer brings.

Unfortunately, many nursing homes have found a way of avoiding lawsuits, not by improving the quality of elderly care, but by forcing residents to sign arbitration provisions. These provisions, often part of hundreds of pages of its fine print sorted through and signed to admit a loved one to Tennessee nursing home care, forces the resident to settle disputes about abuse, malpractice, and negligence in private arbitration.

This means a nursing home’s negligent or abusive acts will not go to Tennessee court where they will be heard by a judge or compassionate jurors but by a private judge, often a lawyer paid by the nursing home. Not only does this removes the financial incentive and fear of a nursing home abuse lawsuit but, to make matters worse, these “impartial” arbitrators, who earn money by repeat business from the nursing home, have the financial incentive to side with the Tennessee nursing home in arbitration matters. Additionally, costs of arbitration, including attorney’s fees, are often born by the family as there is not the financial incentive for personal injury lawyers to take the case as recoveries are below what jurors will award.

As a nursing home abuse attorney who hears the horrors of too many Tennessee long-term care facilities, I wholeheartedly support our United State Congress to move forward with the Fairness in Nursing Home Arbitration Act, S. 2838 and H.R. 6126.

This Fairness in Nursing Home Arbitration Act, if passed, will allow families, not the nursing homes, to choose freely whether they want to arbitrate or bring the case to an open court of law. This bill further invalidates those who have unwitting or by nursing home pressure any mandatory arbitration provisions of a nursing home or assisted living organization.

Government studies show that 20% of nursing homes are negligent to a degree that puts nursing home residents at risk for serious injury or death. Working with those injured in Tennessee nursing homes, this number seems low. Perhaps this is because of arbitration, which is often held behind closed doors. Arbitration decisions are rarely published and this further hides Tennessee cases of abuse and neglect.

By removing the right to sue in public court, nursing homes have swept instances of abuse under the rug. The Fairness in Nursing Home Arbitration Act will allow Tennessee families to know if and when a nursing home is providing inadequate or abuse care. Furthermore, it will ensure abused and neglected nursing home residents their civil right to a hearing as well as the care they deserve.

After years of limiting the rights of our elderly who have been abused in Tennessee nursing homes, it is time we empower our elderly Tennesseans with their full rights under the law. These rights include the right to make public abuse and acts of wrongness against oneself. These rights include the right to fair and safe treatment. These rights include the right to sue.

Heparin deaths have now reached at least 149 Americans from dangerous, recalled Chinese heparin with many more injured. The tainted heparin blood thinner causes allergic reactions leading to serious injury and death.

Baxter International, which once provided half all heparin in the US, issued a total recall of its heparin in January after reports of the blood thinner’s contamination. Made from pig intestines, heparin as a blood thinner is used to flush out IVs, used in oxygenators and medical devices during bypass surgery, and will be injected in some standard medical procedures. The tainted heparin contains an adulterate (that is, Baxter bought heparin that had a cheaper ingredient substituted for pure heparin). Many believe the relaxed manufacturing standards of China where Baxter outsourced production of its heparin responsible for the defective heparin. Tainted heparin has also been recalled in Germany, Italy, France, and Japan.

While FDA officials have direct evidence for 149 death caused by tainted heparin, over 250 heparin-related deaths have been reported. Nevertheless, any sudden or untimely death of a loved one that might be heparin-related should be investigated by a qualified drug injury attorney.

Allergy-type reactions caused by tainted heparin include troubled breathing, nausea, vomiting, and loss of blood pressure. This is due to the substitution of oversulfated chondroitin sulfate (OSCS), a cheaper and illegal substitute for pure heparin. Despite the dangers, FDA officials report that some hospital and health care providers have not complied with heparin recall instructions. From laziness or negligent oversight, dangerous heparin still remains in storage, emergency kits, and dialysis machines, according to FDA reports.

If you believe you or a loved one has been injured by an adverse heparin reaction, contact me, Tennessee personal injury attorney Jim Higgins, by phone at (615) 353-0930 or fill out our online form for a free legal consultation with our Nashville law firm. Higgins, Himmelberg & Piliponis is a Nashville-based law firm with offices in downtown Nashville and offers legal services to clients throughout Tennessee.

St. Louis-based ETHEX Corp. issued a recall this weekend of its morphine sulfate pillstoday after discovering some tablets have as much as double their safe size. This unsafe size can be responsible opiate overdose from the life-threatening excess of morphine.

(NOTE: This should not be confused with the earlier digitek recall for similar unsafe manufacturing errors.)

The specific tablet lots subject to the ETHEX recall were of the 30 and the 60 milligram (mg) varities of the morphine sulfate tablets. These defective tablets have been on the market from for just under two years, June 2006 and May 2008. The 30 mg ETHEX morphine sulfate tablet is oval-shaped and pink with “30” on its front and “E” on its back. The 60 mg ETHEX morphine sulfate tablet is also oval-shaped and has an “E” on its back but is white with “60” on its front.

Potential drug injuries from morphine overdose include difficulty breathing, low blood pressure, and hypotension. Many of these side-effect injuries can be life-threatening.

FDA officials are helping the ETHEX Corporation with this recall of these potentially dangerous morphine sulfate pills from market.

Morphine sulfate tablets are a Schedule II narcotic of the opiate family used to relieve extreme pain.

If you believe you or a loved one has suffered injury from this dangerous morphine pill and would like to pursue legal action against those responsible for ETHEX morphine sulphate injury or death, call HHP at (615) 353-0930 or fill out our drug injury initial response form for a free consultation with myself or one of our other qualified, Nashville drug injury lawyers.

Just west of Tennessee, down Texas way, an Oklahoma hospital will have to answer for its lack of adequate security on its premises after four years of appealing a crime victim's lawsuit. Last week, the Oklahoma Supreme Court decided 5-4 that St. John Medical Center in Tulsa would have to defend itself in a lawsuit filed by one of its nurses. This nurse, unnamed because of her status as a sex crime victim, was kidnapped in the hospital's parking garage.

Parking garages are hotbeds of crime, even in broad daylight, and the kidnapped nurse’s attorney has shown that the hospital was aware of previous violent criminal activity in the parking garage, including assault, battery, kidnapping, and muggings. Despite this knowledge, the hospital did little to improve security on their premises or to deter crime. Their failure to improve security after these assaults, this inadequate security lawsuit alleges, was what allowed for the nurse to be kidnapped and raped when she left her car.

Property owners are responsible for the safety of those invited on their premises, including visitors and employees. Just as the injured has a right to sue for damages for negligence leading to injury if property owners do not warning of a broken stairs or other warn or prevent other foreseeable events that could lead to injury, so, too, does state law, including Tennessee law, allow a victims injured by violent crime, to sue the premises owners if there has been a history of violent crime and the property owners took little or no reasonable measures to prevent future injuries or crime.

Surprisingly, the Oklahoma Supreme Court only narrowed decided that business owners can be held liable for damages if they are aware of recurring criminal activity on their premises and do not take measures to prevent it. Even after all the horrors of violence in the parking garage where the nurse was abducted and raped, the hospital did not increase security. A single security guard watched over 25 monitors, but only one monitor was dedicated to images of the parking garage. The security guard failed to notice the rapist’s van circling the parking garage or that the van’s license plate had been covered with duct tape. And still, the high court nearly decided not to hold liable the allegedly negligent hospital as owners of the dangerous parking garage.

If you were a victim of violent crime and believe you are victim of a Tennessee property owner's failure to address a history crime on their premises, you may be able to sue for damages. To file a Tennessee inadequate security lawsuit, certain conditions must be met beyond being an assault, robbery or rape victim. Fill out Tennessee personal injury lawyer form to speak with me, Attorney Jim Higgins, Nashville native and personal injury attorney in the State of Tennessee. Or give me a call at (615) 353-0930 for a free consultation.