Tennessee Injury Lawyer Blog

Everyone knows the lawyer's role in a personal injury or wrongful death case. However, it is important to remember that the client can play an important role in maximizing the success of the case. When I meet with my client, I will explain to them how they can make me a better attorney on their case.

Here are a few ways my clients help me succeed:

1. Tell me EVERYTHING about your case. Tell me the good and the bad. If I don't know about the weakness of your case (and almost every case has some weakness) than I can't deal with it. Remember, I am your lawyer and what you tell me is privileged.

2. Keep me up to date on your case. Let me know how your injury is progressing, medical treatment is proceeding, etc. I need to know what is going on. A simple email is often enough to keep me up-to-date.

3. Be organized for our meetings. Keep notes to discuss issues, new information, witnesses, etc.

4. LISTEN TO ME. You hired me for a reason. Listen to my advice. You will probably have only one lawsuit in your life and I have had thousands. Take advantage of my experience. We are on the same side, and I will do everything I can for you.

If you have any questions about a serious injury case, you may have feel free to give me a call. We work on cases throughout Tennessee, Kentucky, and Georgia.

Following 5 deaths and 27 confirmed instances in which defective electrical wires in their heart pump implant lead to serious injury and death, Thoratec Corp is requesting all patients with the HeartMate II mechanical heart pump have their implants checked.

Of the 2,000 potentially fatal heart pump put into patients since November 2003, the 5 fatal instances occurred when the defective medical devices could not be replaced. These defective heart pump devices were distributed worldwide, including 87 U.S. hospitals. The chance of wire damage necessitating a replacement increases with time, with three-years showing a one-in-ten likelihood of needing immediate replacement.

Death and injury caused by the defective heart pumps are from insufficient blood flowing to and from the patient’s heart. The purpose of the recalled HeartMate II Thoratec heart pumps is to assist weak hearts in pumping blood throughout the body. Many patients with defective Thoratec heart pumps are in that long wait for a heart transplant.

The heart pump recall affects those Thoratec devices with catalog numbers 1355 and 102139. If you or a loved one has a Thoratec HeartMate II heart pump with these catalog numbers, consult your Tennessee healthcare provider immediately for the best course of action. If you have suffered injury from this defective heart pump, contact our Tennessee defective medical device lawyers for a free consultation.

Nashville circuit court received Friday a sexual harassment lawsuit against Tennessee Highway Patrol from Martha Sanders, a woman who conducts sexual harassment training for THP, and her attorney. This harassment lawsuit follows an investigation earlier this year into charges of sexual harassment against the Tennessee agency. The present lawsuit claims retaliation occurred after Sanders spoke of the sexual harassment she endured..

Another Tennessee employee issued the original sexual harassment complaint, a male employee who retired shortly thereafter. When questioned by Tennessee investigators, Sanders retold the two instances of harassment, including one instance in which she was put in an inappropriate headlock. Sanders reportedly was so upset by her Tennessee coworker’s sexually inappropriate comments and sexual advances that she vomited afterwards.

Sanders was reassigned after the investigation proved inconclusive. Her reassignment placed her among the very supervisors against whom she reported engaged in inappropriate sexual comments. Additionally, many of her training duties were taken from her and, she and her attorney claim, her new, less respectable duties are a form of retaliation. According to the Tennessee employment attorney now involved in the sexual harassment case, the very reason Sanders didn’t report the sexual harassment in the first place was that she was afraid of retaliation from her superiors.

This most recent charge of sexual harassment comes after other instances of sexually inappropriate conduct from Tennessee Highway Patrol, including a male Tennessee trooper fired in September for making unauthorized background checks on Tennessee women and the reassignment of another employee last year after an adult movie “actress” claimed he offered to exchange arrest for drug charges in return for oral sex.

It still amazes me even all these years practicing Tennessee employment law when I receive a call from a victim of sexual discrimination or harassment. I am amazed that any Tennessee worker, but especially our women, are treated as second class citizens or that Tennessee employers would allow a matter other than performance to inform their hiring or promotion decisions. It appalls me whenever I learn that any Tennessee supervisor, male or female, has abused the power of his or her position to sexually harass an employee.

If you have been sexually harassed by your Tennessee employer, you owe it to not only yourself but others who work with you and future employs to give HHP a call. Our Tennessee employment law attorneys have the experience and the resources to find justice for sexually harassed employees.

It seems to me that too often lawyers and the public think of truck accident cases just like in other car wreck case. Unfortunately, this failure to consider a truck accident case as unique often a tragic mistake. In doing so, the trucking company may escape responsibility for putting an unsafe vehicle on the road, pushing a driver to the point of exhaustion and/or putting profits over public safety. Although there is a long list of items my office considers in any trucking case I would like to set forth a few that we often see in this blog and the next few blogs to come. I will start with the rear end collision:

First, people often believe that rear in cases are always the fault of the driver that collides into the rear of a vehicle. This is not always the case. When a passenger vehicle impacts the back or side of a large truck and/or tractor-trailer, running beneath it, the resulting accident is termed “under ride.” Sometime an underide collisions is not a fault of the driver following the truck. Specifically, some of the reasons an under-ride occurs are:

1. The truck has no guard designed to prevent these types of accidents.
2. The truck has a guard, but it is designed poorly and fails to provides adequate protection.
3. Reflective tape or reflectors, used to warn approaching cars, is missing or obscured by mud or dirt.

It is also important to note how the car held up in this type of collision. Was the car "crash worthy"? Did the air bags deploy? Did the glass shatter? Did the seat belt work? A proper inspection should be made of any car involved in a serious accident.

Medtronic, the major medical device maker who has appeared numerous times this year in Tennessee Law Blog’s defective drugs and medical device blogs, now finds itself in a whistleblower (False Claims) lawsuit filed by a former Tennessee employee Ami Kelley, a Nashville, TN Medtronic attorney.

The whistleblower lawsuit alleges Medtronic falsely filed Medicare claims in violation of the False Claims Act, paid kickbacks to over 130 medical doctors, including orthopedic spine surgeons and neurosurgeons, and promoted off-label use (non-FDA approved uses, including INFUSE bone grafts) of Medtronic products, as well as other violations.

Previously in 2006, Medtronic settled for $40 million after a government lawsuit found that Medtronic promoted its medical devices and other products to surgeons by providing such incentives as lap dances at strip clubs like the Platinum Plus in Memphis (whose owner was sentenced for prostitution-related charges in December 2006). The present qui tam lawsuit alleges similar misconduct in "educational" seminars that were more Bacchean than Socratic with women “provided” to attending doctors.

A qui tam or “False Claims” lawsuit rewards whistleblowers reporting fraud against the government, such as Medicare or Medicaid fraud, by offering the whistleblower (called a “relator” in qui tam cases) a percentage of the award moneys returned to the government. Tennessee has its own version, one specific to securing the safety of Tennessee tax dollars funding its health system, called Tennessee's Medicaid False Claims Act (TMFCA), which offers Tennessee relators even higher percentage of the qui tam recovered tax moneys (up to one-third of the total).

Qui tam is Latin and short for a phrase meaning “to sue for the king as well as one's self.” Enacted by President Lincoln during the rampant fraud against the government of the Civil War, False Claims lawsuits are one of the government’s most effective means of limiting fraud and abuse. This is because relator, as an employee, has inside knowledge and understanding of the abuse of government funding. Also, the relator is protected from retaliation from his or her employer for blowing the whistle. For these reasons, qui tam relators have been able to recover literally billions of tax dollars and receive millions for their upstanding honesty and bravery.

If you are interested in learning more about federal or Tennessee False Claims Law, check out our Nashville law office’s webpage on whistleblower/qui tam lawsuits.

If you believe you might have a False Claims whistleblower lawsuit, or have previously pursued a qui tam filing but not had Tennessee or the U.S. government not pursue your case, contact me through our Nashville law office’s website or give me a call at (615) 353-0930. Consultation is always free.

It seems that my office is seeing a bigger trend of employers classifying their workers as "independent contractors" in an effort to avoid providing benefits. We often see these cases when someone is hurt on the job and they are denied Workman's compensation benefits upon the grounds that they are an independent contractor. Unfortunately, the classification as an independent contractor is often given incorrectly and was only given in an effort to escape these benefits.

It is important to know that even if you sign an agreement stating you are an independent contractor you may not be one. The law in Tennessee looks at not what the employer calls the worker but the actual control the company has over a worker to determine if he or she is independent contractor or an employee. In order to determine the extent of the control the following factors are considered:

A. the right to control the conduct of the work
B. The right of termination
C. The method of payment
D. The freedom to select and hire helpers
E. The furnishing of tools and equipment
F. Self scheduling of working hours
G. The freedom to offer services to other entities

The more of these factors which exist allowing the employer to control the worker the more likely a worker is an employee. As such, if you are hurt on the job and were denied workman compensation benefits on the grounds you are an independent contractor, please contact a lawyer to be sure your the denial is legal. You may call or email my office with any questions.

The U.S. Supreme Court, whose 2008-09 term began last week, announced this week its sympathy for a Nashville, Tennessee employee who filed a Title VII anti-retaliation lawsuit (workplace anti-discrimination protections) when her employer fired her allegedly for testifying about her sexual harassment by her boss. The Court hinted that it intends to expand sexual discrimination protections, this positive action after so many absurd and hurtful workplace law decisions from the Court the past eight years, including Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire Co.

This historic civil rights case, Crawford v. Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County, Tenn., 06-1595, arose when a payroll coordinator for Nashville, Vicky Crawford, was fired in 2003 after 30 years of dedicate employment. The discriminated Tennessee employee mentioned during an investigation instigated by another female employee that she had been subject to unwanted sexual advances by her male superior. When Metro officials in subsequent investigations asked for details of sexual harassment, Crawford reported that the harasser in the same Tennessee department had grabbed his crotch in front of her multiple times, asking to see her breasts, and had once forced her head towards his groin. But Crawford had not filed an official sexual harassment complaint.

When both Crawford and the harassed woman filing the sexual harassment complaint were fired a few months later, Crawford took what she felt to be workplace retaliation (click for more on Tennessee retaliation law) to federal court. Yet while her harasser remained employed by Nashville and Davidson County and she was the one being punished for doing right, the circuit court decided against Crawford.

Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act does allow for limited anti-retaliation protections but lower courts (including the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which governs appeals in Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee) have interpreted Title VII’s anti-retaliation provisions to only apply to those directly affected by and filing a discrimination or sexual harassment charge.

Click hear to read more about Tennessee discrimination law.

If your Tennessee employer has sexually harassed you or has let your age, race, religion, gender, or other factor external to your work performance determine your pay, decide who is promoted, or is otherwise guilty of Tennessee workplace discrimination, Higgins, Himmelberg & Piliponis wants to help. Call our Nashville law offices at (615) 353-0930 or fill out our Tennessee employment law attorney form for a free initial consultation with an employment law attorney experience in Title VII discrimination lawsuits.

A Tennessee nursing home investigation uncovered violations in administration and nursing services for Boulevard Terrace Rehabilitation and Nursing Center, a 100-bed nursing home in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. The Tennessee Department of Health has suspended all new admissions and imposed a $1,500 penalty and recommended a federal penalty of $4,000 a day until the major violations are corrected.

While Tennesseans with loved one in nursing homes await specifics of this Murfreesboro nursing home's violations, some knowing the Tennessee Department of Health Commissioner may only suspend a Tennessee nursing home’s admissions when conditions are determined to be "detrimental" to Tennessee nursing home residents’ “health, safety or welfare,” Tennessee Law Blog would be remiss if it didn’t cover a shocking New York Times story earlier this week on the epidemic of nursing homes nationwide in violations of federal health and safety standards.

The Times article by Robert Pear reports on a recent Department of Health and Human Services report revealing that 94% of the nation’s nursing homes were cited in 2007 for violations. Interestingly, for-profit homes had on average a higher incidence of safety or health violations than other types of nursing homes.

Overall, about 17% of U.S. nursing homes had violations that caused, according to the inspector general of DHHS, patients “actual harm or immediate jeopardy.” These violations often indicated the presence of widespread and/or persisting nursing home abuse.

From the 37,150 federally filed nursing home complaints, DHHS nursing home investigators were able to take action on 4 out of 10, with 2 out of 10 confirming reports of abuse or neglect of nursing home residents.

The primary cause for nursing home neglect or abuse, according to the report, is because nursing homes “have systematically failed to provide staff in sufficient numbers and with appropriate clinical expertise to serve their residents.”

In our own state, and too often the case, Tennessee nursing home abuse remains hushed by nursing home staff and administrators. A native Tennessee nursing home attorney under the process of discovery can uncover the depth of abuse and neglect occurring in a Tennessee nursing home. If you believe your loved one has suffered some form of nursing home abuse or neglect, let our qualified TN nursing home attorneys at our Nashville office know. Initial consultation with a HHP nursing home lawyer is always free of charge.