Hospital can be liable for 'independent contractor's' actions

Parents of a newborn delivered at a Florida hospital signed a “consent form” stating that a specialist participating in their child’s birth was an “independent contractor” and was not employed by the hospital.

The couple’s son was born suffering from fetal-maternal hemorrhage and compression of the umbilical vein, which deprived him of oxygen-rich blood. In the hours following his birth, the baby’s breathing became more labored and he required resuscitation.

The baby ultimately developed permanent brain damage, and the parents blamed a neonatologist and the hospital, claiming the resuscitation had not been performed correctly or quickly enough.

The parents asserted the hospital had a contractual obligation to provide proper neonatal care to their newborn son, and to also provide the needed medical and surgical treatments.

The hospital countered it wasn’t responsible for the child’s injuries because the specialist was an independent contractor, which the parents had acknowledged when they signed the consent form.

But the Florida Court of Appeal disagreed with the hospital, ruling the case could proceed to trial.

The court said once the hospital contractually agreed to provide medical care it couldn’t avoid liability simply by hiring an independent contractor.

The consent form only indicated the parents acknowledged the medical care was delegated to an independent contractor specialist. While the hospital can’t be liable as an employer, it remained responsible for its obligations under the contract with the parents, the court said.

Because the exact scope of the hospital’s obligations under the contract was unresolved, the court sent the case back to the trial court.

Versaladder company pays $700,000 for death

The maker of the once-popular folding scaffold called the Versaladder has agreed to pay $700,000 to the widow of a South Carolina man who died when his ladder collapsed.

Frank Socky was replacing rusty screws on a floodlight at his home on Father’s Day when he fell backward onto a concrete walk. Within an hour, he was dead.

Since 1990, more than 170 people have been involved in Versaladder collapses. Many of these people have sued, claiming the hinges that extend the scaffolding have failed. So far, the company has paid damages or settled claims with more than 80 people.

The company has stopped making the product, but it is believed that almost a million Versaladders may still be in use.

Exhausted interns make more medical mistakes

A study by a Harvard Medical School professor has shown hospital interns who work shifts of 24 hours or longer make more errors because of fatigue – and this could be responsible for thousands of deaths each year.

Interns are more than four times as likely to cause a patient’s death due to a fatigue-related mistake if they work five or more 24-hour shifts a month, the study found.

“We found that for every 100 interns working for a year, they on average made 200 significant medical errors, 20 significant medical errors that caused a preventable injury to their patients, and five serious medical errors that caused the preventable deaths of their patients,” said Dr. Charles Czeisler, who led the study. If these findings are applied to the roughly 100,000 young doctors in the U.S. working such schedules, he said, it would mean that intern fatigue causes tens of thousands of preventable injuries

to patients – and thousands of preventable deaths – every year.

The findings were based on a survey of 2,737 interns. A separate study by Dr. Czeisler previously found that interns who work long shifts are twice as likely to cause a car accident after they leave work.

The practice of having interns work extremely long shifts began back in the 1890s, and was intended to allow interns to follow a patient’s complete course of treatment. But these findings suggest that while hospitals still following the practice may think they’re doing a better job of teaching, they’re actually injuring and killing the patients in their care.

Student injured in golf class can sue for injuries

A 7th grade student was struck in the mouth by a golf club swung by a fellow student during a class in which the teacher had divided the students into groups to practice golf swings.

The student suffered injuries and sued the school and teacher.

The school and teacher successfully had the lawsuit dismissed before it went to trial.

But on appeal, the California Court of Appeal reversed that decision, saying the case should proceed.

People injured during sports activities often cannot sue because the risk of certain injuries is inherent in the sport itself, and people who play the sport

voluntarily assume that risk.

But the court emphasized that being struck in the face by a golf club is not an inherent risk of golf.

Requiring golfers to make sure the area around them is clear before they swing the club would not fundamentally alter the game, the court noted.

Similarly, a coach or teacher should ensure that team members or students in a gym class maintain a safe distance from each other while practicing their swings. This would not alter the game, the court added, since it has nothing to do with the mechanics of a golf swing or the fundamental nature of the game.

Maker of migraine medicine hit with $7.4M verdict

A Vermont woman was injected with Phenergen, a drug manufactured by Wyeth designed to combat nausea from migraine headaches.

An injection of the drug was supposed to be in a vein of her arm, but it was accidentally injected into her artery instead, which was severely damaged, causing gangrene. The woman’s hand and forearm were amputated as a result.

She sued Wyeth, alleging the drug label for Phenergen inadequately warned of the dangers of IV injections. A jury ruled in her favor and awarded her $7.4 million.

Wyeth appealed the verdict, arguing Vermont law on failure-to-warn didn’t apply to the woman’s case because the federal Food and Drug Administration had previously approved Phenergen’s label.

But the Vermont Supreme Court upheld the verdict. A federally approved drug label, according to the court, doesn’t necessarily shield a drug maker from liability if an additional warning is required under state law. A label approved by the

FDA is only the first step in the process of warning consumers, the court said.

The court also noted the FDA and states share the same purpose of encouraging pharmaceutical companies to alter their labels when they are inadequate to protect consumers.

Consumers are barred from bringing a lawsuit in state court only if a state’s laws would make it impossible for a drug manufacturer to comply with federal labeling requirements, the court held.