Pittsburgh Personal Injury Law Blog

Over the past few years, several hospitals in the Pittsburgh area have invested millions of dollars to "spruce up" their emergency rooms. http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11342/1195428-455.stm While some of this may be motivated by legitimate need, there is no question that marketing and public relations play a role in improving the atmosphere, emergency rooms are high volume, and likely high profit, areas for the hospital, and they no doubt have figured out if you create a nice "feel" in the room, it is more likely that people will use your emergency room than some competitor's.

Certainly it is nice to go an emergency room and have a comfortable area to sit and perhaps view a television, but no doubt what patients are most interested in receiving is good medical care. Over the years, a very high percentage of our medical malpractice cases have occurred in emergency room in various Pittsburgh hospitals. Some of the most common cases involve the failure to diagnose heart attacks and strokes; the failure to detect head trauma and other brain injuries such as blood clots, and also "missed" fractures on x-rays. Medication errors also occur with regularity in the emergency room. These medical mistakes often lead to a variety of personal injury and wrongful death claims.

Hospitals would do well to focus on improving some of their systems in the emergency room and not merely adding a fresh coat of pain to the waiting area. By their very nature, emergency rooms are high-traffic areas of the hospital and, sadly, the shuffling of patients from doctor-to-nurse and back-and-forth and often leads to mistakes.

Also hospitals, and patients, can benefit from improved systems to prioritize patients according to how serious their condition is. The medical term for this is "triage." It is just common sense that people who come in with a potential heart attack or stroke should be given far more attention than someone with an ankle sprain. Some hospitals have developed "fast track" programs to take care of more routine, simple illnesses and other dedicated "tracks" to take of cardiac or neurologic problems.

Another problem in emergency rooms is the training and experience of the doctors. Many hospitals, particularly those outside of metropolitan Pittsburgh, are not staffed by Board certified emergency physicians. Instead, they may have family doctors who are simply "moonlighting" in the E.R. Additionally, some emergency rooms are not fully staffed during the evening or over-night hours.

Yes, it is nice to be in an emergency room that has been "spruced up," but more than that, patients want to be in an emergency room that has first-quality care. In short, most people would take a great doctor over a comfortable sofa any day.

Although no civil law suits have yet been filed against Penn State in the growing sex abuse scandal, there is certainly no doubt that they will be coming down the road. People have asked legal questions about these cases, and we try to answer some of the most common questions here.

1. What is the statute of limitations on these claims? - It depends on when the abuse occurred. If the incident with the victim happened before late June 2002, then the child typically would have until the age of twenty (20) to file a legal claim. If the abuse happened after late June 2002, the victim would have until age thirty (30).

The reason for this distinction is because the statute of limitations in Pennsylvania was changed and made longer as of late June 2002. Incidentally, the most highly publicized of the many incidents at Penn State - - - the one that allegedly occurred in the shower at the football facilities - - - occurred in the Spring of 2002 and, therefore, that victim would have only until age twenty to bring a legal claim.

2. Does Penn State have immunity from legal claims because they a state school? - The short answer to this is no. Although many state institutions have immunity (That is a legal term that means they cannot be sued.) that usually only applies to agencies that are 100% government related. Although Penn State, like the University of Pittsburgh and Temple University, receives some state funds, they are not a state institution or a state-owned school. Therefore, they do not have immunity from the law suits that will be filed by the victims.

3. What sorts of damages can the victims claim? - The law suits will seek damages for physical harm as well as the emotional toll of the abuse. Those are called compensatory damages because they are meant to compensate the individual for what they have gone through. The amount any victim is entitled to receive could vary from person to person depending on the extent of the abuse and the effect it had on them. Those awards could be quite large.

In addition to compensatory damages, the victims could also claim punitive damages. That is a monetary award not necessarily related to the harm suffered by the victim but instead a separate amount designed to punish the institution. In order to receive punitive damages, the victim would need to prove that Penn State's conduct was outrageous and reckless.

4. Who will pay the damages? - Penn State likely has liability insurance that would apply to compensatory damages be owed to victims. It is not clear exactly how much such insurance Penn State has and whether or not it is sufficient to cover all of the claims.

If punitive damages are awarded, it is likely that Penn State does not have insurance to cover those amounts.

Therefore, any amounts not covered by insurance, either for compensatory or punitive damages, would have to be paid out of the University's own general funds.

5. Could the individual Penn State employees have to pay damages to the victims? - Certainly there could be damage awards entered against any of the individuals, but they may not have money to cover those claims. The University, however, would be responsible to pay on their behalf because their bad acts occurred while they were on the job.

John Gismondi is quoted in the KDKA article on the Penn State sexual assualt scandal.

Click here to read the article in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette today, "Civil suits could weigh heavily on PSU."