The long and troubled journey of Malyia Jeffers now has found closure following a settlement between her family and Methodist Hospital, in California. The Sacramento girl was forced to wait five hours in an emergency room for medical attention regarding an infection. The girl was running a fever and was weakened due to a strep infection. Medical malpractice attorneys believe that due to the long wait she endured at Methodist Hospital, she lost her feet, her left hand, and part of her right hand. Once she finally did receive medical assistance, she was immediately flown to Stanford University where she was diagnosed with septic shock.
Damage Award Necessary for Child to Survive
Jeffers’ family agreed to a settlement with Methodist Hospital and emergency room workers in the amount of $10 million. Medical malpractice attorneys believe that $9 million will come from the hospital while the remainder will be paid by Emergency Physicians Medical Group of Sacramento, resulting in one of the largest awards in California history. Some of the money will go towards current expenses and the remainder will be given to young Malyia, beginning in 2026 on her 18th birthday, at $16,000 per month. Although California has a damage cap in place at a quarter of a million dollars, this only limits damages related to “pain and suffering”. Medical malpractice attorneys believe that this settlement was properly designed to avoid the cap and attribute the amounts of money to different types of damages. Hopefully, this amount of money will help the young girl adapt to her new life after this devastating case of malpractice and will allow her to lead a normal life.
Medical Malpractice Attorneys in New Jersey and Philadelphia
If you or a family member have recently been the victim of medical negligence, it is possible that you would like to speak with our medical malpractice attorneys. Please contact the Mininno Law Office for a free case evaluation, or call for a free consultation at (856) 833-0600 in New Jersey, or (215) 567-2380 in Philadelphia.
After a state Health Department investigation, a Minnesota nursing home is being held responsible for the death of 82-year-old Keith H. Johnson. The nursing home served Johnson a tuna sandwich on December 13, 2010 which was in violation of his doctor’s orders to only eat pureed food because of his history of eating too fast and choking. The man, who suffered from Alzheimer’s, was then left unsupervised and began to choke on the sandwich. An employee noticed that he was trying to cough and then became unresponsive and was not breathing. There were two failed Heimlich maneuver attempts to restore his breathing before Johnson was taken to the hospital. He died six days later from lack of oxygen to his brain and cardiac arrest.
At the end of October the police went to the son of 74-year-old Carol Brown’s home to find her unresponsive and living in deplorable conditions. The paramedics rushed Brown to the hospital but she died several days later. According to the officers who entered the home, they described Brown as “a rotting corpse that was still breathing.” The rescue crews had to pry her from the leather recliner because her legs had become fused to the chair. Court documents also revealed that she was sitting in her own bodily fluids and waste with a swollen ankle wound with maggots inside. According to Brown’s daughter Laura Sanders, the doctors told her “There were sores on her back the size of a man’s fist.”
Medical malpractice attorneys have traditionally believed that the use of electronic medical records would actually decrease the number of medical mistakes and other prescription errors. With the increase in technology, medical malpractice attorneys thought that doctors and nurses would be better equipped to avoid preventable mistakes and injuries and reduce the potential for civil lawsuits. It is easy to see why people thought that better technology would help healthcare providers avoid unnecessary medical malpractice. Doctors, who are notorious for poor handwriting, would not have the same problems communicating data to others in patient charts, the equipment could monitor drug prescriptions to avoid dangerous mixtures, and hospital workers could be alerted easily of particular patient conditions without the hassle of digging through charts. However, many studies are now showing that the expected benefits of the new healthcare technology are not coming to fruition as fast as expected, if at all. The Institute of Medicine has also highlighted numerous dangers that could lead to malpractice and cause patients severe injuries. The report stated “although the magnitude of the risk associated with health IT is not known, some examples illustrate the concerns. . . Dosing errors, failure to detect life-threatening illnesses, and delaying treatment due to poor human-computer interactions or loss of data have led to serious injury and death.”
Peggy Ballinger, a 55-year-old former care provider at the Alois Alzheimer Center, is facing charges after being accused of stealing pain medications from her Alzheimer’s patients. She is being charged with 
Brian Watt, a 29-year-old sex offender and former certified nursing assistant at the facility, was arrested on September 9. He was charged with 
Sandy Pasch originally wrote the bill in an attempt to disallow courts to consider healthcare provider’s apologies, but since the bill became more expanded, she elected to vote against the bill. Pasch, a nurse, was quoted as saying,
Richard Lee Wallace, 57, is standing trial this month for charges of elder abuse and neglect of an incapacitated adult resulting in death. Paramedics found his 86-year-old mother, Elise Wallace, dead in the home they shared on April 18. They found her body on the couch of the messy home covered in maggot-filled bedsores, gangrene, and surrounded by hundreds of flies. The paramedics testified that she had been dead no more than an hour when they arrived. The cause of death was determined to be a