Sides rest in Calif. lead paint trial

Now a waiting the decision on the "Lead Paint Tria," the judicial deliberations will commence after closing arguements scheduled  for Sept. 23, 2013. Today's post was shared by Legal Newsline and comes from legalnewsline.com

Kleinberg

Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge James Kleinberg on Thursday praised lawyers prosecuting and defending a 13-year-old lead paint public nuisance case after both sides rested at trial.

“Lawyers on both sides and their staff did an exceptional job in every way,” he said. “I must tell you that ‘impressed’ would be too mild of a word. All of your clients ought to be extremely, extremely proud.”
Kleinberg described the six-week trial experience as “difficult,” but “joyous.”

What awaits are a couple of deadlines for papers, but most importantly closing arguments which are set for Sept. 23.

At closing, plaintiffs will get 30 minutes for argument and 15 minutes for rebuttal. Each of the five defendants will get 30 minutes for argument and 15 minutes for rebuttal.

Ten California cities and counties are seeking declaration of public nuisance on pre-1978 built private residences with interior lead paint, as well as more than $1.2 billion in monetary damages to abate the lead in nearly 500,000 residences.

In The People of California v. Atlantic Richfield, et.al., other named defendants are The Sherwin Williams Co., Con Agra, DuPont, and NL Industries.

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Jon L.Gelman of Wayne NJ is the author NJ Workers’ Compensation Law (West-Thompson) and co-author of the national treatise, Modern Workers’ Compensation Law (West-Thompson). For over 4 decades the Law Offices of Jon L Gelman  1.973.696.7900  jon@gelmans.com  have been representing injured workers and their families who have suffered occupational accidents and illnesses.

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• Plaintiffs' expert says lead paint abatement could cost $1.4 billion (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
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Why Is Obama Caving on Tobacco?

Tobacco in the workplace has been greatly reduced. It is,, and was a major contributing factor to occupational disease claims. Today's post was shared by WCBlog and comes from www.nytimes.com

LAST year I endorsed President Obama for re-election largely because of his commitment to putting science and public health before politics. But now the Obama administration appears to be on the verge of bowing to pressure from a powerful special-interest group, the tobacco industry, in a move that would be a colossal public health mistake and potentially contribute to the deaths of tens of millions of people around the world.

Although the president’s signature domestic issue has been health-care reform, his legacy on public health will be severely tarnished — at a terrible cost to the poor in the developing world — unless his administration reverses course on this issue.

Today in Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei, representatives from the United States and 11 other nations begin the latest round of negotiations over the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a multinational trade agreement. The pact is intended to lower tariffs and other barriers to commerce, a vitally important economic goal. But if it is achieved at the expense of people’s health, the United States and countries around the world will be worse off for it.

On Access and Accountability — Two Supreme Court Rulings on Generic Drugs

Today's post was shared by WCBlog and comes from www.nejm.org

Perspective

Marcia M. Boumil, J.D., LL.M., and Gregory D. Curfman, M.D.

N Engl J Med 2013; 369:696-697August 22, 2013DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp1308368

Article

In June, the U.S. Supreme Court issued two rulings regarding the marketing of generic drugs that may alter the pharmaceutical business landscape. First, in Federal Trade Commission v. Actavis, the Court confronted the law governing a controversial pharmaceutical marketing practice known as reverse payment agreements, or pay for delay.1 This practice occurs when a generic drug company identifies a vulnerable patent held by a brand-name drug manufacturer and seeks approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for a generic version before the patent expires, provoking a lawsuit for infringement. The two companies then forge a settlement whereby the brand-name company pays the generics firm to delay commercialization of its product. Extending the monopolies of brand-name companies in this way reportedly costs consumers more than $3.5 billion per year.2 Since such settlements suppress competition, the Court sent the case back to the district court to be evaluated according to the “rule of reason,” one of the standards for determining whether an action violates antitrust law.

Second, in Mutual Pharmaceutical v. Bartlett, the Court ruled that generics manufacturers are substantially immune from civil claims regarding injuries caused by their products — a decision that eliminates a primary incentive for...

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Thousands of doctors practicing despite errors, misconduct

Today's post was shared by WCBlog and comes from www.usatoday.com

Dr. Greggory Phillips was a familiar figure when he appeared before the Texas Medical Board in 2011 on charges that he'd wrongly prescribed the painkillers that killed Jennifer Chaney.

The family practitioner already had faced an array of sanctions for mismanaging medications — and for abusing drugs himself. Over a decade, board members had fined him thousands of dollars, restricted his prescription powers, and placed his medical license on probation with special monitoring of his practice.

They also let him keep practicing medicine.

In 2008, a woman in Phillips' care had died from a toxic mix of pain and psychiatric medications he had prescribed. Eleven months later, Chaney died.

Yet it took four more years of investigations and negotiations before the board finally barred Phillips from seeing patients, citing medication errors in those cases and "multiple" others.

"If the board had moved faster, my daughter would still be alive," says Chaney's mother, Bette King, 72. "They knew this doctor had all these problems … (and) they did nothing to stop him."

Mari Robinson, executive director of the Texas medical board, says the Phillips case took "longer than normal, but we followed what we needed to do (by law)." Phillips could not be reached for comment.

Despite years of criticism, the nation's state medical boards continue to allow thousands of physicians to keep practicing medicine after findings of serious misconduct that puts patients at risk, a USA TODAY...

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UPS Won’t Insure Spouses Of Some Employees

Today's post was shared by WCBlog and comes from www.kaiserhealthnews.org

Partly blaming the health law, United Parcel Service is set to remove thousands of spouses from its medical plan because they are eligible for coverage elsewhere.

Many analysts downplay the Affordable Care Act’s effect on companies such as UPS, noting that the move is part of a long-term trend of shrinking corporate medical benefits. But the shipping giant repeatedly cites the act to explain the decision, adding fuel to the debate over whether the law erodes traditional employer coverage.

Rising medical costs, “combined with the costs associated with the Affordable Care Act, have made it increasingly difficult to continue providing the same level of health care benefits to our employees at an affordable cost,” UPS said in a memo to employees.

The company told white-collar workers two months ago that 15,000 working spouses eligible for coverage at their own employers would be excluded from the UPS plan in 2014. The Fortune 100 firm expects the move, which applies to non-union U.S. workers only, to save about $60 million a year, said company spokesman Andy McGowan.

UPS becomes one of the highest-profile employers yet to bar working spouses from the company plan. Many firms already require employees to pay a surcharge for working-spouse medical coverage, but some are taking the next step by declining to include them at all, consultants say.

“They are simply saying to the spouse outright, ‘If you have coverage somewhere else you are not eligible...

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NH Supreme Court outlines intoxication defense and other parameters of workers' comp claims

Today's post was shared by WCBlog and comes from www.therepublic.com

CONCORD, New Hampshire — The New Hampshire Supreme Court has ruled that intoxication must be determined to be the cause of an accident for it to be a defense against a workers' compensation claim.

The court sent Thomas Phillips' case back to the state Compensation Appeals Board for a finding on whether his intoxication caused him to fall from a tree while cutting a branch and suffer injuries that left him a quadriplegic.

Phillips received a break in his rent from his landlords and next-door neighbors — Norman and Diane Crocker of Danville — in return for doing maintenance work around both houses.

When he was hospitalized after the 2006 fall, his blood alcohol content was 0.27, more than three times the legal limit to drive.

A Department of Labor hearing officer awarded Phillips benefits, but the Compensation Appeals Board reversed that ruling in 2010, saying Phillips was drunk. But the board failed to specifically say that Phillips' intoxication was the cause of his fall and injuries.

"The CAB may have erroneously believed that the petitioner's intoxication alone was the enough to deny him benefits," Justice James Bassett wrote, in the unanimous ruling released Wednesday. "Our concern on this score is heightened by the fact that there were no witnesses to the accident and that there was evidence the accident may have occurred as a result of the tree branch snapping while (Phillips) was attempting to cut it."

Phillips' lawyer, Michael Mortimer, declined to...

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US Supreme Court Asked to Review MSP Preemption Issue

The US Supreme Court has been asked to review a claim on behalf of an injured worker who asserts that the Medicare Secondary Payer Act did not preempt State law (i.e.. Texas) that required a Workers' Compensation claimant to obtain preauthorization from relevant insurance carriers before incurring certain medical expenses. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals held that Medicare's conditional payment for a workers surgeries did not render the  state law mandate for  preauthorization requirements "moot."

A Writ of Certiorari was filed with the US Supreme Court on Aug. 8, 2012 and a response is due September 11, 2013 

Guadalupe Caldera v. Insurance Company of the State of Pennsylvania, US Supreme Court Docket No. 12-40192. Case below, 716 F 3d 861, Docket No, 12-40192, 5th Cir Ct Appeals, Decided May 14, 2013.

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Jon L.Gelman of Wayne NJ is the author NJ Workers’ Compensation Law (West-Thompson) and co-author of the national treatise, Modern Workers’ Compensation Law (West-Thompson). For over 4 decades the Law Offices of Jon L Gelman  1.973.696.7900  jon@gelmans.com  have been representing injured workers and their families who have suffered occupational accidents and illnesses.