August 2008 Archives

Camryn Jakeb Wilson was bathed in TV lights the day he was born, celebrated on the local news as Summit County, Ohio 2008 New Year's baby after his arrival at 12:33 a.m. on January 1.

Just 12 weeks later, he quietly died in his mother's arms, the victim of shaken baby syndrome. Camryn was critically injured, with bleeding inside his head and in the backs of his eyes, and several broken ribs -- some of which, according to the autopsy, turned out to be older injuries. Medical personnel at the hospital determined the combination of injuries could only mean abuse.

Recent pediatric heart transplants performed in Colorado have created disturbing questions about determinations as to when a patient is dead. For decades, determine that a donor’s brain has completely stopped working before harvesting organs for transplant. In the case of at least three infants, each was on life support and showed little brain function, but did not meet the criteria for brain dead.

With their families’ consent, the newborns were taken off ventilators and surgeons in Denver removed their hearts minutes after they stopped beating. The hearts were successfully transplanted, and the babies who received the transplanted hearts survived.

A new study, which is to be published in the September issue of the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, concludes that personal injury plaintiffs – victims of accidents, medical malpractice, legal malpractice, etc. – and plaintiffs in contract disputes typically improve their outcome by settling. The mistake of turning down settlement offers and proceeding to trial, and doing worse than the offer, was typically made in contingent fee cases.

If a murder is committed and a handgun found at the scene, would you expect the police to hand the gun over to the defense attorney? Essentially the Boston police and the Suffolk district attorney's office did the equivalent when they decided to hand over a possibly faulty ventilator to the manufacturer and let it examine the device that shut down during a power outage and led to the death of a 15-year-old.