Mississippi Injury Lawyer Blog

When we step into a hospital seeking treatment, we rely on the experience and advice of the medical professionals who treat us. Especially when we are in very vulnerable states, we look to doctors and other medical professionals to give us accurate information, in order to protect us from possible infection or further injury. We look to hospitals and medical professionals to help, not hurt. However, according to the Clarion Ledger, when Ellecia Small and Kinyata Johnson entered the University of Mississippi Medical Center in order to receive organ transplants, they did not exit as healthy patients, they exited as the victims of medical malpractice.

Both Small and Johnson received kidney transplants from the same donor at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in 2009. Small, who received her transplant in November of 2009 exited the hospital with a new kidney, which should have meant a new lease on life. However, three months later, she died. Johnson, the other kidney recipient is now partially blind and needs constant care. Both Johnson and the family of Small are filing separate lawsuits against the University of Mississippi Medical Center, as well as the Mississippi Organ Recovery Agency for medical malpractice. Both parties are being represented by Joe Tatum, a Jackson, Mississippi medical malpractice attorney.

According to Tatum, when Johnson entered the hospital, "he thought it [the transplant] would help him, but he was better off before the kidney." As a result of the injuries he has sustained, Johnson has filed a suit seeking unspecified damages. The lawsuit filed on behalf of Small is seeking unspecified damages as well.

The lawsuit filed on behalf of Smalls in the Circuit Court of Hinds County alleges that the kidney transplanted into Small came from a donor who had been diagnosed with encephalitis. Also according to lawsuit filed on Small's behalf, "Both defendants were aware that the kidney donor was infected with encephalitis before the subject kidney was transplanted into Ellecia Smith. And as a result, Ellecia Small, developed severe encephalitis, neurological damage and died." Although information regarding the specifics of Johnson's is not immediately available, it is likely that Johnson's lawsuit alleges similar instances of negligence.

Continue reading "Lawsuit against Jackson, MS Hospital Alleges Hospital Negligent In Transplanting Infected Organs" »

Earlier this month, the Mississippi Supreme Court overruled a $7 million dollar verdict that had previously been entered against paint maker Sherwin Williams in 2009, according to the New York Times. The jury in this products liability case handed down this verdict on behalf of the plaintiff, Shermeker Pollard, who brought the case on behalf of her son, Trellvion Gaines. In its decision, the Court cited the inadmissibility of the plaintiff's two expert witnesses as the justification for its decision to overturn the $7 million dollar verdict against Sherwin Williams. The Court determined that minus this expert testimony, the plaintiff could not prove that Sherwin Williams' negligence led to Trellvion Gaines' injuries.

In 2000, Shermeker Pollard filed a claim, on behalf of her son, Trellvion Gaines. Pollard alleged that her son, Gaines, sustained brain damage after ingesting lead-based paint that was obtained from Sherwin Williams. According to LegalNewsline.com, when Gaines was a child, his grandmother witnessed him ingesting paint chips that were peeling from the home they were occupying. Since 1993, when a blood test conducted on Gaines revealed that he had elevated levels of lead in his blood, Gaines has been developmentally disabled.

According to the plaintiff, Sherwin Williams is liable for Gaines' damages because the house that Gaines occupied was painted with lead based paint procured from Sherwin Williams in the 1930's. Despite the plaintiff's allegations, the house burned down in 1994. Thus, further testing was rendered impossible. As a result, Sherwin Williams argued, throughout the entire course of litigation, that the plaintiff failed to ever prove that Sherwin Williams even provided the paint that may have led to Gaines' injuries.

Early on in the case, Sherwin Williams won summary judgment in the case. However, this ruling was overturned by the Mississippi Supreme Court, and the matter was allowed to go to trial. In 2009, a jury in Jefferson County, Mississippi handed down a verdict awarding Pollard $7 million dollars. As reported by the Columbus Morning Call, despite overruling Sherwin Williams' original summary judgment victory, and allowing the case to go to trial, the Mississippi Supreme Court tossed out the jury verdict in favor of the plaintiff citing the inadmissibility of the testimony of the plaintiff's two expert witnesses.

Continue reading "Inadmissible Expert Testimony Led to Mississippi Supreme Court Overruling $7 Million Dollar Verdict against Sherwin Williams" »

It was 2010 and the first day of formal off-season workouts when 20 year old Bennie Abram collapsed on the field. He had the sickle cell trait, but he wanted to play football, in fact he was pretty good at it, and the university staff and employees had been made aware of his situation. In fact, as of 2009, the NCAA made it a requirement that all athletes be tested for the trait. Although being a carrier does not bar athletes from playing, it allows the NCAA to mandate slow and gradual preseason conditioning training.

According to the Clarion-Ledger, Abram's family alleges in a wrongful death suit that "the first day of workouts was 'carelessly and recklessly excessive'" and that Abram himself had not been notified of his test results - a decision, they assert, that prevented him from taking necessary precautions to keep from overexerting himself. The sickle cell trait appears most often in members of the African-American population, with nearly 10 percent being diagnosed and between one in 2,000 to one in 10,000 diagnoses in Caucasians.

Named in the suit are the University of Mississippi, the football coach and the NCAA. Mississippi lawyers know that this certainly isn't the first time that a family has sought to hold a school responsible for the untimely death of an athlete. Most of those cases involve heat stroke and overexertion. This particular case will be unique if simply for the fact that it also involves not only alleged negligence at practice on the part of the coaches and medical response team but also involves medical disclosure, and the added failure of the NCAA to fully disclose to a player his own medical condition. Although unique in that sense, statistics show that this isn't the first such case.

Continue reading "Suit Filed Against University of Mississippi for Wrongful Death of Former Football Player" »

On September 6, 2011, Winston J. Thompson III, a wrongful death attorney with the Cochran Firm in Jackson, Mississippi, in conjunction with the Southern Poverty Law Center, filed a wrongful death suit against seven Rankin County, Mississippi teens. The suit, which was filed on behalf of the family of James C. Anderson, a Jackson, Mississippi man, alleges that the teens are liable for actual and punitive damages as a result of their involvement in the death of Mr. Anderson.

According to the Clarion-Ledger, the lawsuit claims that sever whit teenagers set out on a mission one night to Jackson, Mississippi. The lawsuit claims that the purpose of the teens' mission was to assault an African-American. The complaint goes on to state: "They found Mr. Anderson, a black man, in a parking lot in Jackson. Several teenagers took turns beating him for an extended period of time, and then one of the teenagers drove over Mr. Anderson with a Ford F-250 truck." The seven teens that the complaint alleges are responsible for the fatal attack of Mr. Anderson are: Deryl Dedmon Jr., John Aaron Rice, William Kirk Montgomery, Sarah Graves, Shelbie Richards, John Blaylock and Dylan Butler.

This lawsuit stems out of the death of Mr. Anderson, which occurred on June 26, 2011. The facts surrounding Mr. Anderson's death were revealed to the world by CNN in their recent television report. See the CNN report of the incident below. Please be advised, this video depicts violent actions. Viewer discretion is strongly advised.

Continue reading "Jackson, Mississippi Attorney Files Wrongful Death Suit on behalf of the Family of a Man Killed during a Suspected Hate Crime " »

On August 29, 2011, the Supreme Court of New Jersey ruled that a statute barring uninsured motorists injured in automobile accidents from recovering also applied to the heirs of insured drivers who were killed as a result of an automobile accident. According to the New Jersey Law Journal, the Court ruled that an heir cannot initiate a wrongful death action on behalf of a decedent who was killed as a result of an automobile accident, if that decedent was an uninsured motorist. The statutory law that the court relied on in its decision was N.J.S.A. 39:6A-4.5(a). It is quoted below:

"Any person who, at the time of an automobile accident resulting in injuries to that person, is required but fails to maintain medical expense benefits coverage mandated by section 4 of P.L.1972, c. 70 (C.39:6A-4) , section 4 of P.L.1998, c. 21 (C.39:6A-3.1) or section 45 of P.L.2003, c.89 (C.39:6A-3.3) shall have no cause of action for recovery of economic or noneconomic loss sustained as a result of an accident while operating an uninsured automobile."

Although this statutory language only refers to the right of an injured party to bring suit, the court determined in its decision that there is no legislative intent to suggest that the heirs of a deceased party have any greater rights than that party would have had if he were brining suit on his own behalf.

The New Jersey Supreme Court laid down this decision in Sheila Aronberg v. Wendell Tolbert, et al. Sheila Aronberg is the mother of Lawrence Aronberg, who died when his car was struck from behind on the New Jersey Turnpike on Sept. 15, 2005, by a tractor-trailer. As a result of her son's death in this accident, Sheila Aronberg sued both the truck's owner, Fleetwood Trucking Company, and the truck's driver, Wendell Tolbert, under New Jersey's Survivor Act and the state's Wrongful Death Act.

Prior to the accident, Lawrence Aronberg's automobile insurance policy with Allstate insurance company had been cancelled because of lack of payment. Because Lawrence was uninsured at the time of the accident, pursuant to N.J.S.A. 39:6A-4.5(a), the Superior Court judge dismissed the survivor claim, but allowed the wrongful death action to proceed. The Superior Court's rationale for allowing the wrongful death action to proceed in the face of the statute was that the wrongful death claim belonged to the heirs, not the decedent. Therefore, the claim was not barred by the statute.

Continue reading "Do the Families of Uninsured Drivers Deserve Compensation? The New Jersey Supreme Court Says No" »