Posted on 08/18/2007 10:37:04 AM PDT by Kaslin
BARTOW, Fla. — A jury awarded $25.8 million Friday to the family of a cancer patient who was given a wrong prescription, had a stroke and died several years later, lawyers said.
Beth Hippely was prescribed Warfarin, a blood thinner, in 2002 to treat breast cancer. The prescription filled at a Walgreen pharmacy was 10 times what her doctor prescribed, court documents said.
The Polk County Circuit Court jury found the prescription error caused a cerebral hemorrhage resulting in permanent bodily injury, disability and physical pain. The mother of three died in January at the age of 46.
A 19-year-old pharmacy technician, with little training, misfiled the prescription, according to court documents.
The lawsuit was filed in 2003 by Hippely, her husband Deane Hippely and their children against the Deerfield, Ill.-based Walgreen Co. for negligent breach of duty and wrongful death.
"Beth Hippely died unnecessarily because this tenfold overdose with Warfarin by the pharmacy she trusted caused her cancer to come back with a vengeance and it interrupted all of her cancer treatments," her lawyer Chris Searcy said. "They have been seeking justice for almost five years and this was a case that screamed out for justice."
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Walgreen didn’t train her properly, so of course it’s their fault
this is about as useless as debating a parrot.
Typically the attorneys take these cases on a 33-40% contingency, plus costs. It’s not like a class action suit.
Do you have any idea what it costs to take a case like this to trial? The lawyers usually have to advance the costs of going to trial, and that’s a minimum of $50K in a case like this, which they may or may not get back, depending on the verdict. They have to pay for expert witnesses that run tens of thousands of dollars, for depositions, court reporters, etc. The firm probably had a dozen people working on the case that it had to pay every week and, again, without winning, would never have recovered those costs. It’s high risk for the lawyers/firms and they are entitled to their %.
I read the Walgreen’s apology that rings hallow, or the case would never have gotten to trial. They probably could have settled long ago for far less than the jury granted.
This was not a class action lawsuit. This was a wrongful death lawsuit with a specific plaintiff, referring to a specific deceased person, and a specific grieving family. It’s not a large group of plaintiffs. People seem not to understand the difference.
I’ve never understood why anyone would sign onto a class action lawsuit. Tell us why you did, please, as opposed to pursuing your own individual claim for whatever the damage was.
Kaslin, you are confusing this, a wrongful death case, with a class action case. There’s a huge difference. Lawyers in wrongful death or personal injury usually get 1/3; sometimes if there are appeals, they will get 40% and as noted earlier, they usually take all the financial risks of pursuing the claim. It’s not a huge payoff when all is said and done and weighed against the costs and risks.
I NEVER signed onto a class action lawsuit but was added as an affected party anyway and awarded useless coupons while the lawyers got tens of millions for using my name. WebTV was one of these suits. I was added because I had once had a WebTV.
squawk!!!!
Your responses are not worth replying to. When offered facts and logical arguments, you respond with emotions. You act like a democrat, and should be ashamed of yourself.
Your responses are not worth replying to. When offered facts and logical arguments, you respond with emotions. You act like a democrat, and should be ashamed of yourself.
It boggles the mind that Iwo Jima can state repeatedly that he was defense counsel for malpractice and other types of injury cases for 20 years, and yet he still gets pilloried as a "scum sucking lawyer" by the legal cretins of FR for pointing out legal truths.
The lawyers and the judge did not award her the money.
The jurors in thier infinit wisdome decided to do so.
Oh, there you go spoiling a great story by introducing facts to it. Don't you know that its lawyers who decide who gets what in a civil action? Judges, juries, they don't matter. Lawyers grant the judgments, and the defendant must comply.
The rediculous costs involved in proving a negligence case often are 99% the result of the strategy of the defense, but I realize that I am wasting my time assaulting you with facts when you have your feelings to rely upon.
If the lawyers used your name without your permission, it would seem they have an ethics violation (at a minimum). Class action suits became the cause celebre of shysters everywhere.
I’ve received letters as a person with a potential interest in various class action suits, and never returned the forms, authorizing them to represent my interest as an allegedly aggrieved party. I don’t see how they can use names of persons who have not signed on and authorized the attorneys to ‘act on their behalf.’
Or it could be you weren’t so much added as a party to the suit as the judgment or settlement between the suing parties and (in your case) WebTV required them to make the (useless coupon) payment to all former subscribers, whether they were party to the action or not.
Still, that is very different from this FL wrongful death case.
Notice how the resident FR lawyers have never addressed your basic point about the class action/useless coupon scam. Guess it’s OK to use us in their lawsuits without our permission and we have absolutely no say in the matter. I remember actually trying to contact Netflix about one of these recently trying to be sure my name was OFF the class action list. There is no way to get in contact with the selfless public servants who were helping me to get justice for the greivous harm Netflix inflicted on me.I got my mind right, Boss. Lawyers don’t suck scum. I just imagined my lady with the quartz kidney stone suing me. I made it up soley to make lawyers look bad. I now admit under oath that there are never frivolous lawsuits filed and that this lady pressurized carbon in her renal calyx into a triclinic rose-quartz stone.
I have been working in the civil jury trial business for 20 years an I have not seen the case that is worth that much. I have seen worse than hemorragic stroke - parts of the body removed, organs extruded out of the body, open wounds, quadraplegia, ect. I have never seen a life care plan that amounts to $20 mln., which is about the only thing that would make this verdict reasonable. This is just a sentiment - and it is personal to me.
As to your statement that we don't need tort reform, we need jury reform, I disagree. We need certain types of tort reform such as for class actions and products liability.
Juries do the right thing 99% off the time, despite the lawyers and the judge. As far as reform - here is what I mean. I overheard a Clerk of a county that contains Philadelphia suburbs and some rural areas. Out of 700 jury subpoenas, 240 showed up for service. The contempt that some have for our system is palpable, which I sense during jury selection. And when you have an out of wack verdict, the public catterwalls that it is because of the lawyers, and not because of a collection of idiots on the jury. Bad verdicts happen because our system is devalued in the eyes of potential jurrors. Good people decide they would rather do other things than serve. So we get idiots who don't want to be there and who are willing to express their emotions and sentiments through their verdict.
So when I get involved in a conversation about tort reform, I say we don't need it. Most tort reform solutions disempower the jury system, most likely in response to some powerful special interest anyway. We just need to properly apply the laws we have. So who applies the law? The jury. If nobody wants to participate, then we get the government we deserve. So we do not neet tort reform - we need jury reform.
The first step putting the focus on the problem, instead of letting our profession be a punching bag for interests that want to escape from the jury system. With recogniotion of the problem comes acceptance of responsibility and reform.
I defend them through their malpractice insurance carrier. I have one case where the client, formerly a judge, has appeared several times on television for expert commentary.
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