Illinois Deserves the Truth

New Bill Seeks to Hold Foreign Manufacturers Accountable for Unsafe Products

Cross posted from The Pop Tort by John Guyette

There are good ideas and there are great ideas.  For example...cheese - good idea.  Cheese in a can - great idea!  Well perhaps not everyone agrees with me on this.  But most would agree that corporations should not get off scott-free when their products maim, injure or kill consumers.  Corporate accountability - good idea.  Actually introducing and enacting legislation that holds corporations accountable for faulty products that hurt consumers - great idea!

Thankfully, Congress moved one step closer to better protecting American consumers hurt by products from foreign manufacturers.  Like the toys that contain excessive amounts of lead paint or the bad batches of the drug thinning drug, heparin.  Today, U.S. House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers and Commercial and Administrative Law Subcommittee Chair Linda Sánchez put the cheese in a can so to speak by introducing the "Protecting Americans from Unsafe Foreign Products Act." In addition to Conyers and Sánchez, the bill has three other original co-sponsors.  Sounds like a great idea to me.

I only hope the rest of Congress and the President realize the merit of this legislation.  Corporations whether at home or abroad just like everyone else should be held accountable for the damage they cause.  It just makes sense!

Chicago Tribune gets it wrong about construction safety bill

Today the Chicago Tribune wrote an editorial about the Construction Safety Act of 2008, House Bill 2094, and got it totally wrong.  This important legislation will help protect Illinois construction workers and we should fight to get it passed.

One of the points that the editorial makes is that the Workers' Compensation System is " is fair, and relatively quick and inexpensive. It works."  I believe if you ask the thousands that have  experienced it they will tell you a different story.  CJ&D  released a good study, Workers' Compensation - A Cautionary Tale, in 2006 about the pitfalls of the system.  It is an informative and interesting read about the subject.   

In response to the editorial we wrote a letter to the editor (below),

The Tribune’s editorial “The Lawyers-get-work act” (April 29, 2008) gets it wrong.  The Construction Safety Act of 2008 would be good for workers and Illinois and it should pass. 

Construction is one of the most dangerous job in the state.  In 2006, there were over 13,000 construction worker injuries.  More construction workers die each year than firemen and police combined. New York, which already has a similar law on the book, has some of the lowest construction death and injury rates in the country.

Moreover, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is supposed to assure the safety and health of America’s construction workers - but is ill-equipped to do so.  At their current staff levels it would take over 121 years to inspect everything they are responsible for overseeing.  In other words, more needs to be done to ensure the safety of Illinois' construction workers.

This important legislation would provide the financial incentive for owners and contractors to provide safe scaffolds and other potentially deadly equipment, and to prevent the hiring of low-bidding subcontractors, who are tempted to work as quickly and cheaply as possible while cutting safety corners to save money.  It places responsibility for safety practices at a construction site on the owner and general contractor—where it belongs. 

Jason Held
Staff Director,
Center for Justice & Democracy-Illinois

Lets see if they publish it.  I am not holding my breath.

If you haven't already, please contact your State House Representative to let them know you support HB 2094.  Click here to locate your state House Representative

Oil companies paying up

A suit in downstate Hartford is causing two oil companies to compensate residents who had to face serious health risks from leaking gas fumes.

Hartford residents have complained for years about hydrocarbon vapors that make them feel ill and wreck property values. Experts think the underground pool has been accumulating for more than 75 years.

The companies are supposedly working with the EPA to keep the toxic vapors out of people's homes, but obviously it is still a problem.  It often takes settlements like this one to get companies to really clean up their act, so let's hope that's the case here.

To read more about how the civil justice system protects consumers and the environment, go to the CJ&D report, “How the civil justice system protects environmental health”

When Doctors Dose Themselves

Men'sHealth published a disturbing article about drug addict doctors - focusing on the high concentration of anesthesiologists  who rank high among addict doctors.  It is very sobering to think of what can go wrong under the best of circumstances, but what happens when the person in charge of your life is addicted to drugs? 

The article tells a sad story of Herman Cole and his, 36-year-old wife, Sadie, who was to have a straightforward tubal ligation, and ended up with severe brain damage.  After Herman was told by a doctor that her injuries centered around mysterious circumstances, a nurse who was in the operating room pulled him aside and told him he should hire an attorney and start asking questions.  Herman took her advice and hired Richard Silver, who began digging around and found out the truth.

Sadie's anesthesiologist -- Dr. Jay Angeluzzi -- had behaved bizarrely during the procedure. First, he'd failed to recognize that Sadie had stopped breathing, even after the electronic monitor's alarms sounded. Then, instead of examining her, he'd turned off the alarms and left the room. It would be 9 critical minutes before anyone noticed Sadie was not responsive. By the time she was revived, her brain had been oxygen starved and ruined.

Dr. Angeluzzi, Silver discovered, had a history of drug abuse, psychiatric treatment, and failed institutional rehabilitations. He'd left Connecticut's Hospital of St. Raphael in 1985 after abusing tranquilizers while on duty, and had moved to Massachusetts, where his license was put on probation and he had to submit to special monitoring. But after a few years, Dr. Angeluzzi applied for a job at Norwalk Hospital, never mentioning his drug problems. One of his old bosses even made it easy for him, saying that Dr. Angeluzzi had moved to Massachusetts because of "family problems."

What makes this story even more tragic is that the doctor after this incident was allowed to practice medicine, even at the same hospital, until sadly he did this again to another patient which lead to death.  This horrific tale is unfortunately not isolated.  As we in Illinois saw with the Marion VA hospital, a bad doctor, Jose Veizaga-Mendez, was allowed to jump states, be hired and contribute to the deaths of at least 13 patients.  (It just so happens that both Veizaga-Mendez and Angeluzzi practiced in MA.)

While, one of the things that shocked me the most about this article is that the profile of a junkie doctor is, "...tend to be young, ambitious, highly talented physicians who graduated at the top of their medical-school classes and are ranked among the most popular and requested at their hospitals."  I must say all of the attributes are the ones I tend to look for in my healthcare provider.

As the article hints that many doctors continue to practice even with severe drug addictions and their colleagues turn a blind eye, a patient needs every resource available to help protect themselves and hold bad doctors accountable.  This is why accessibility to doctor's disciplinary and legal action information is very important to everyone.  Illinois is one of the few states to have a website devoted to providing this important information.  (You can access it at  http://www.idfpr.com/)

Additionally, we need to allow victims of medical malpractice to have clear access to the Civil Justice System, where they can hold doctors accountable and warn others of potential bad doctors.  Lawsuits help warn others of potentially bad doctors and is an effective tool to get rid of them.    

Update: Latin School at Lincoln Park

Earlier we posted on a controversy brewing in Lincoln Park, where the private Latin School scored exclusive rights to use the park's new multi-million dollar soccer field. Well, last week a circuit court judge handed down some good news for the neighborhood group that filed a lawsuit and other residents upset by this unfair deal.

It doesn't look like the Latin School is going to get away with exclusive use of the park until there is more public input.  That's a good thing.

Disciplining bad doctors

Illinoisans got some encouraging news from a Public Citizen study released earlier this week.  We ranked 12th in the nation in their study of how effective state medical boards are at disciplining bad doctors.  Springfield's paper covered the Illinois results,

Illinois took 170 “serious disciplinary actions” against the state’s 41,581 doctors in 2007, and Illinois ranked 12th highest among the 50 states and the District of Columbia in the average disciplinary action rate per 1,000 doctors from 2005 through 2007.

It's great that our state medical board is doing so much to hold bad doctors responsible for mistakes.  On the other hand, these results highlight how serious of a problem this is.  We need to keep disciplining bad doctors, but we also need an open civil justice system to hold accountable those who are still practicing.

Find the full Public Citizen study here.

"Say Whaaaat?" Award Number Three

Cross posted from The Pop Tort by John Guyette.

It is not often that we give out a "Say Whaaaat?" Award even though many are deserving of this award on a daily basis.  We want to keep it special and therefore we have reserved it only for those unique individuals and groups who truly defy common sense with a kind-of reckless abandon.  So with that (drum roll please) the third "Say Whaaaat?" Award in the history of the Pop Tort goes to...

NBC's Chief Medical Editor, Dr. Nancy Snyderman. 

This morning on the "Today Show," Dr. Snyderman single handedly dismantled what could have been an informative report on how the sad state of US health care is negatively impacting women.  At the end of the segment, the good doctor blames the woes of a shotty US Health care system, including the skyrocketing costs, on...."defensive medicine"?  I am not making this up.  Congratulations Dr. Snyderman for going against what is commonly referred to as "logic"!

Never mind the fact that 47 million people don't have health insurance.  Or that 98,000 people are killed each year by medical errors in hospitals, many of which are easily preventable. Did I mention that these easily preventable errors account for billions, thats right billions, of dollars each year?  Thankfully we have groups like CJ&D that can call these people on their nonsense.  Check out this letter from CJ&D Executive Director, Joanne Doroshow, to the "Today Show".

Harry Potter scribe sues to protect her creation

All the charms, potions, curses, jinxes or spells could not protect the world of Harry Potter from copyright infringement - well maybe the courts can.  J.K. Rowling, author of the widely popular Harry Potter series, has brought suit against the author of "The Harry Potter Lexicon."  Rowling's suit is trying to prevent the publication of the book saying it is a copyright infringement on her beloved work.  In an article from Law.com describing the suit and testimony, it says,

Rowling employed a sharp tongue to charge that a Michigan publisher borrowed much from her wildly successful works and added nothing when it created a "lexicon" alphabetically listing characters, places, spells, creatures and objects in the Potter series.

If Rowlings tongue is as sharp as Hermione Grainger's wit, I am sure the defendant and the packed court room got an ear full. 

Not being very knowledgeable about intellectual property or copyrights, I don't know how this is going to turn out.  But as a Harry Potter fan I will be watching to see where this all ends up.  Too bad Potter and his friends cannot come to Rowling's rescue - good thing we all have access to the courts to help settle our disputes and uphold justice.

Church shielded sex criminals

A victim of sexual abuse is filing a suit against a west suburban church and a former youth pastor.  This church allowed multiple sexual offenders to serve as church officials without letting people know about it.  In this case, a girl was abused by a youth pastor (Greene) after he knew she had already been abused by another church official, her father.

The suit claims that the victim confided in Greene that she had been sexually abused by her father, a former deacon of the church, but instead of reporting it to the police as required, Greene began to sexually abuse the girl, 14 at the time. The suit claims he abused her at least 50 times between 1994 and 1999, while promising the girl he was helping her.

The suit also claims that two other church officials…have been charged with sexual assault in the last five years.

This church has shielded multiple sexual predators and so far has escaped punishment.  Thankfully, we have the civil justice system to hold groups like this accountable for their wrongdoing.  We'll keep track of this so check back.

Earth Day, Environmentalism and the Civil Justice System

Today is Earth Day 2008!  On Earth Day, we are bombarded by messages that talk about the need to protect and conserve our planet. We hear about groups of school children starting recycling programs in their communities, or new technologies that create less pollution or assists us with cleaning up old problems.  What you don't usually hear about is one of the most effective tools we have in this country to protect our environment: The Civil Justice System. 

A report released earlier this year, by The Center for Justice & Democracy, details many situations where private citizens brought civil cases and made polluters clean up their mess.  One of the cases highlighted is the "Love Canal" case:

In the early 1970's, a young mother named Lois Gibbs became concerned by her children's recurring illnesses, including rashes, respiratory difficulties and a serious blood disorder.  She began talking to her neighbors about it, and her informal survey suggested that there were a high number of babies with birth defects in homes near Love Canal on the outskirts of the City of Niagara Falls, New York. This spurred the State Department of Health to study the area.

Between 1942 and 1952, Hooker Chemicals & Plastics Corp. buried more than 21,000 tons of hazardous chemical wastes in a 3,000-feet long trough called Love Canal.  Over the next 20 years, chemicals from the site seeped into people's basements, contaminating underground sewer pipes and soil, and polluting the indoor air. The Department found an unusually high number of miscarriages among women living near Love Canal, and an elevated number of birth defects - including cleft palate, deformed ears and teeth, and other significant abnormalities. Approximately 950 families were evacuated from a 10-square block surrounding the landfill.

By February 1982, more than 600 personal injury cases had been filed against Hooker (which was bought by Occidental Chemical Co.).  In January 1985, 1,336 residents agreed to a $20 million settlement with Occidental that established a $1 million medical trust fund.  Thirteen years later, the last of the Love Canal cases brought by 899 victims settled for $6.75 million.8 Funds from the settlements have helped pay medical expenses of former Love Canal residents who have illnesses that have been linked to the contamination.

This case spurred passage of the Comprehensive Environmental Remediation, Liability and Compensation Act (CERCLA), also known as “the Superfund law,” which mandates cleanup of toxic sites.  In March 2004, the federal EPA declared cleanup at the site complete, despite lingering concerns of some community leaders, and removed Love Canal from the “Superfund list” of hazardous waste sites.

Citations Omitted.  Click here to view full report.

Because of cases like Love Canal, and others, many individuals have gotten justice and redress.  However, these cases not only benefit them, but benefit all of us.  While the civil courts have been a major tool in the fight for environmental justice and accountably it is under attack by the organizations that commit much of the harm: Big Business.

Big Business and their "tort reform" movement has taken aim at the civil justice system, to limit the access to justice for millions of Americans.  Not only have they tried to limit access, but through lobbying efforts they have tried (and succeeded) in passing legislation that limits their liability (and accountability) when they do harm.  We need to send a clear message to our legislators that we need open access to our civil courts to hold wrongdoers accountable for their misdeeds. 

On this Earth Day let us remember how, among many other tools, the Civil Justice System has helped protect people and the environment.