Pittsburgh Wrongful Death Law Blog

A 63-year-old was recently airlifted by medical helicopter to Hershey Medical Center in Pennsylvania after he was involved in a motor vehicle accident with a tractor-trailer. And while his injuries appeared to be severe enough to warrant needing immediate medical attention, the driver of the tractor-trailer who rear-ended the backhoe the 63-year-old was driving only suffered from minor injuries.

When looking at what happened, the truck accident took place around 10:48 a.m. At the time, the 63-year-old was driving a John Deere backhoe on Route 997 in Fayetteville, Pennsylvania, when his vehicle was rear-ended by a tractor-trailer. The tractor-trailer was being operated by a 32-year-old.

It's a safe assumption to say that most people don't like going to the doctor. However, even if we don't necessarily want to be there, it's still important to make sure to ask questions before going through any kind of medical procedure, because as it turns out, many procedures and tests that are ordered are unnecessary and in some cases could even end up harming a patient. Of course, this also raises the question though of if a lack of these tests could result in more delayed diagnoses.

Recently, a group of medical societies made recommendations to encourage doctors to tread a little more lightly when it comes to ordering tests. This in turn could end up resulting in doctors not automatically ordering a routine chest X-ray before a surgery or first ordering an ultrasound for child with suspected appendicitis, which could prevent the child from being subjected to unnecessary and possibly damaging high levels of radiation.

It was back in July 2010 when two Hungarian students drowned after being involved in a duck boat accident off of the Philadelphia shoreline. Now, the families of those students are waiting to hear how their federal wrongful death lawsuits will proceed.

The accident happened when an empty sludge barge being guided by a tugboat crashed into a duck boat. At the time, there were 35 passengers and two crew members aboard the boat. The two students, ages 20 and 16, were the only ones killed in the crash.

The lawsuit names several defendants, including the city of Philadelphia, which owned the barge, the operator of the tugboat and the operator of the tour boat. However, the operators of the tugboat and tour boat have asked the judge to cap the limit of financial liability at $1.8 million, which would be the monetary value of the tug and duck boats.

Having a baby is supposed to be one of the happiest moments in a person's life. However, when medical staff act negligently and a baby is born with a birth injury, suddenly that joy turns to devastation as parents try to piece together what went wrong and what should have been done differently to prevent such an injury from occurring in the first place.

Medical malpractice was at the heart of one recent case where a family claimed that due to a cesarean section not being done in a timely matter at a Pennsylvania hospital, their child suffered from a birth injury that will affect the child for the rest of their life. The child, who is now 3 years old, has severe spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy.

How many times have you been driving behind someone who just has their blinker on? You start to wonder, is the driver intending on ever moving over to the other lane, or did he or she simply forget to turn off the blinker? And while this can certainly be confusing to other motorists on the road, let's also not forget about the other side of the spectrum: The driver who doesn't use a blinker. Instead he or she just suddenly moves over a lane, or seemingly out of nowhere slows to turn.

It turns out both of these driving behaviors -- not turning off or not using a turn signal -- are very common and lead to millions of motor vehicle accidents every year in the United States.

Pennsylvania patients should be alert to the fact that sometimes medical errors are made at hospitals. When this is the case, patients can end up being seriously injured or even killed.

An example of this goes back to March 2011 when a man died after medical staff improperly removed a catheter. After his death, a probate document claims that the family of the man had a "cause of action" against the medical center where the medical error was supposedly made.

In one of the largest product recalls of children's medicine, Johnson & Johnson recalled more than 136 million bottles of children and infant medicines throughout the United States. However, one family is claiming this massive recall came too late, as only 13 days before the recall was announced, their baby ingested one of the defective products that ended up being contaminated with deadly bacteria.

According to a recent report, the infant was born healthy, but died when he was only two-months-old after a routine check-up. At that time of this check-up, vaccinations were administered and he was prescribed Concentrated Tylenol Infants' Drops to combat symptoms often associated with the vaccines. The parents were provided with appropriate instructions.

Some doctors are quick to write out prescriptions, rather than take the time to really analyze the medical condition of their patients. When this happens, and a doctor does not adequately examine or continue monitoring a patient after simply prescribing a medication, this may amount to medical malpractice placing the patient at risk of serious injury.

If the patient happens to be a child, then it should be expected that particular attention will be paid to ensure that the patient is responding well to the treatment plan, and has not developed additional medical problems from the prescribed course of action. This is especially true when addictive drugs are being prescribed.