Colorado Law Blog

Nearly half of the 1.2 million people killed in traffic accidents around the world each year are not in even in a vehicle. They are on motorcycles and bicycles or walking along roadsides. That finding, released in a report last month, may help explain why 90 percent of the world's traffic fatalities occur in a group of countries that together have fewer than half of the world's cars.

Five years ago, the United Nations agency published a report focusing on the need for legal, medical and road-engineering interventions, such as speed bumps, to prevent accidents or reduce fatalities. The agency needed the data to assess how widely the strategies were used. The data were gathered last year from transportation, health and police officials from around the world, who met under WHO auspices to pool information and answer a questionnaire.

One of the more surprising discoveries was the toll on pedestrians, bicyclists and motorcycle riders crowding the roads in developing countries, who accounted for 46 percent of all traffic deaths.

High-income countries, such as the United States and most of the nations in Europe, have about 52 percent of registered cars but only 8.5 percent of traffic deaths. For low-income countries, including most of sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, the statistics are nearly reversed. They have 9 percent of the world's cars but almost 42 percent of the traffic deaths.

The report identified five risk factors for injury on the road, each of which can be lessened by well-enforced laws: speed, drunken driving, helmets, seat belts and child restraints. Only 48 percent of countries have laws addressing all five risk factors, and only 15 percent have laws that appear adequate.

Posted by Linda Chalat at 3:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Yet another employee at a Denver hospital has been arrested for stealing drugs. This latest case involves a registered nurse at St. Anthony Central Hospital who was arrested by Denver Police on July 16th. The nurse has been identified as Jillian Fischer, 43. The Denver District Attorney's office is reviewing the case and is expected to file charges next week.

St. Anthony fired Fischer in mid-June. A spokeswoman for the hospital says she didn't work in the operating room, but the spokeswoman wouldn't say whether any patients were ever in danger. After the recent outbreak of Hepatitis C infections contracted from the Rose surgical technician, anyone who has set foot in a Denver hospital has reason to wonder..

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Tragically the first Colorado Springs case of hepatitis C linked to the surgical technician recently arrested has been identified. One person who underwent surgery at the Audubon Surgery Center in Colorado Springs appears to have contracted hepatitis C from surgical technician Kristen Diane Parker, the Colorado Department of Health and Environment reported today.

Parker worked at both the Rose Medical Center in Denver and at the Audubon Surgery Center in Colorado Springs. This new case brings the total of patients who appear to have contracted hepatitis C from Parker to 20. Health officials believe as many as 5.700 people were potentially exposed to the disease by Parker's actions. See Patients exposed to Hep C.

A Denver federal grand jury indicted Parker on 42 counts Thursday, including 21 counts of product tampering and 21 counts of obtaining a controlled substance by deceit. Parker admitted to police she stole the medication from surgery rooms and injected herself with syringes containing fentanyl, a powerful narcotic. Prosecutors allege Parker then refilled used syringes with saline and placed them back on surgical trays before a procedure, potentially exposing the patient to the Hepatitis C virus.

The indictment handed up Thursday alleges Parker began taking the pain killers from operating rooms on Oct. 22, two days after she started working at Rose Medical Center. Parker worked at Rose from Oct. 20 until April 13, when she was placed on administrative leave for failing a drug test. She came under suspicion at Rose about two weeks earlier when a syringe in her top scrub pocket poked a co-worker. See Hep C Infection for more information.

Posted by Linda Chalat at 3:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Every teen or pre-teen party seems to offer the opportunity to bounce on some form of inflatable game. Inflatables come in all shapes and sizes with names like moonwalker and bounce house. They're big and bouncy and irresistible to kids.

Other children suffered bumps and scrapes when the ride flipped several times.
In 2007, a 3-year-old died when he was crushed by two adults. Last fall, a young girl died after she broke her neck doing somersaults down an inflatable ride in Festus, MO. And last month, a 17-year-old Texas boy attempted a back flip on an inflatable ride, fell on his neck, and is now partially paralyzed.

A Massachusetts-based company has been charged with manslaughter in the death of a woman who fell from an inflatable climbing wall and died from her injuries several days later. The company, Just for Fun Rentals, operated the device at a festival in May, 2005.

Such accidents are on the rise as the popularity of inflatables grows, according to the Web site, Ride Accidents.com, which tracks incidents. The newest numbers from the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which were last updated in 2005, report four fatalities in inflatable-related accidents from 2002 to 2005. In 2004, inflatable rides, such as inflatable slides and bouncers, accounted for an estimated 4,900 injuries treated in hospital emergency rooms, according to the agency. That was up sharply from 1997, when the CPSC estimated only 1,300 such injuries -- a whopping 277 percent increase in just eight years.

In 2007, the CPSC issued one of its first recalls of inflatable amusement ride devices in several years: Some 2,600 bounce houses made by Sportcraft were recalled after the company received a handful of reports of fans and the surrounding plastic breaking apart during use, causing the inflatables to lose air.

One of the first states to get tough on inflatables was New Jersey, which requires inspections and mandates that inflatables meet wind-anchorage and combustibility requirements. ASTM International, a voluntary-standards development organization, has developed a standard for inflatables. While ASTM standards don't carry the weight of law, they may be referenced in laws or contracts.

Before letting your child use an inflatable at a carnival or festival, check with the operator to see if it is properly anchored and that users are supervised. If you are renting one for a backyard event, follow these safety tips:

• Limit the number of users on the device;


• Make sure the inflatable isn't overloaded or unstable;


• Securely anchor the inflatable to the ground with pegs;


• Place the blower so it can't accidentally be unplugged, causing the inflatable to collapse

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For many of us, nothing captures the essence of summertime like fresh produce -whether tomatoes and corn on the cob or strawberries and watermelon. After months of half-ripened grocery store produce, the wealth of fresh, local fruits and vegetables is heavenly. And for true connoisseurs, enjoyment of the abundance is enhanced when the bounty is free of unneeded chemicals, antibodies or hormones. But how to assess the degree to which our food is "organic" or "natural"?

But these rules only apply to large farmers, if a food producer sells less than $5,000/year of organic food locally, then a "certified naturally grown" certification may be earned. And further complicating the consumer choices, the USDA regulations only apply to meat, milk, eggs, cheese and other "single ingredient" items.

For more information and help, the place to start is your computer. If you visit http://www.colorado.gov/ , type in "farmers market" and the search produces several links to the state department of agriculture's directory of Colorado farmer's markets listed by day of the week. The website http://www.organiccolorado.org is maintained by the Colorado Organic Producers Association and provides information on organic agriculture as well as lists of organic farms and suppliers. For a national perspective, websites like organicconsumers.org, naturalnews.com, and takepart.com provide news, advocate forums, current events, and opportunities to participate in global food-related reform.

So learn the terminology, shop wisely and then enjoy the season's bounty!

Posted by Linda Chalat at 12:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Shockingly, a second Denver-area hospital has revealed that surgical patients were possible exposed to hepatitis C as a result of the misconduct of a hospital employee.

Officials at Rose Medical Center and the state health department said Monday that they followed protocol and notified patients within days of making the connection. Yet patients, dozens of whom got free hepatitis C tests at Rose over the weekend, were questioning why the hospital and state health department took so many weeks to find the link.

After a deeper review of Rose surgery logs, state investigators zeroed in on Parker, finding that she had been fired after a positive drug test and that she had hepatitis C. Parker admitted during interviews conducted June 22 through 25 that she had stolen syringes of Fentanyl from anesthesia carts at Rose and the Colorado Springs surgery center and replaced them with syringes of saline.

And 5,700 patients who might have been injected with saline solution in her used syringes instead of the powerful painkiller Fentanyl had no idea of the potential danger.

The Rose Medical Center nightmare is a repeat of that which came to light just about nine months ago at Boulder Community Hospital. Ashton Daigle, a surgical nurse at the Boulder hospital, pleaded guilty in June to charges he stole Fentanyl and replaced it with saline solution -- or even tap water from a bathroom. He was caught after an anesthesiologist reported many of his patients were still in extreme pain after he thought they had received Fentanyl. Daigle faces a minimum of 54 months in prison when he is sentenced in October. Hospital officials and prosecutors have said more than 300 patients may have been affected by the thefts, which occurred Sept. 24 through Oct. 24.

As a result of the Daigle case, Boulder Community Hospital has become more aggressive at making sure drugs are closely monitored.

Posted by Linda Chalat at 4:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Nolo, a publisher of do-it-yourself legal books and software, has created a free dictionary app for the iPhone with plain-English definitions of nearly 4,000 legal terms. Nolo's Plain-English Law Dictionary contains 3,800 plain-English legal definitions, including many newly coined terms you'll find online and off, such as "typosquatting" and "patent troll". Of course, if you need definitions for legal standards -- even when they're in Latin -- you'll find those too.

The app is based on Nolo's Plain-English Law Dictionary, which was first published in May and is available both in print and as an eBook. Among the app's features: Users have the ability to suggest words to add to the dictionary, and there is also a searchable directory of lawyers.

Black's Law Dictionary--which defines 43,000 terms and perhaps has a different target audience than Nolo's dictionary--became available on iTunes in April. That app, however, will set you back about $50.

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