Personal Injury and Social Security Disability Blog

Dallas County Cracks Down On Jury Duty No-Shows

I've been practicing law in Dallas for more than 40 years now. And for every bit of that time Dallas County has had a problem with people who are called for jury duty not showing up to serve. One reason it's been a problem for so long is that there has essentially been no enforcement of the law requiring service. If you ignore the jury summons, nothing happens to you. Until now, perhaps.

As reported by the Dallas Morning News, Dallas County has begun a pilot program to enforce this civic responsibility. It's not yet a really serious attempt at enforcement, but at least it's a start. Here are excerpts from the newspaper article:

A pilot program that began this year requires no-show jurors to appear before a judge where they are publicly chastised. They are then offered a chance to reschedule their jury duty, and if they don’t show up again, they can be fined $1,000 or arrested.

Only 1 in 5 Dallas County residents summoned for jury duty shows up, said state District Judge Martin Lowy, a civil courts jurist who is the administrative judge for the county. No-show jurors cause an endless cycle of frustration for some courts. Showing up for jury duty is not voluntary: It’s a civil duty, and it’s the law.

Arrest is unlikely. Jurors who don’t show for duty can be jailed for contempt of court, but the county jail is already stuffed with people who have committed far more serious crimes. The county also has more than 190,000 unserved warrants for people who are wanted, and limited resources for finding and jailing them.

The county summons hundreds of thousands of jurors each year. Most no-shows will never be called before a judge.

“I don’t think we would ever have the resources to reach out and touch everybody who doesn’t appear,” Lowy said. “But we want people to know it’s a possibility.”

Under the pilot program, 60 to 80 no-show jurors are summoned two afternoons a week before an associate judge to reschedule their service.

There have not yet been any arrests or fines under the pilot program. Lowy says that hasn’t happened because the program is in its infancy.

If arrest warrants are eventually issued for those who fail to appear for jury duty or for the hearing before an associate judge, the warrants most likely would be added to the pile of others waiting to be served, Lowy said.

Texas Financial Responsibility Law: Minimum Auto Liability Insurance Limits Have Increased

After an intolerable number of years at the same very low minimum limits, Texas automobile liability laws were changed over the past several years. The minimum policy amount went from $20,000 to $25,000, and then to the current $30,000. This information is from the Texas Department of Insurance.

Texas law requires people who drive in Texas to pay for the accidents they cause. Most drivers do this by buying automobile liability insurance.

Liability insurance pays to repair or replace the other driver’s car and pays other people’s medical expenses when you are at fault in an accident. It does not pay to repair or replace your car or for your injuries. Consider buying other types of coverage – such as personal injury protection or medical payments, collision, and comprehensive – to pay for these expenses.

Financial Responsibility

Most drivers buy liability insurance to meet the state’s financial responsibility law. You must buy at least the minimum amount of coverage. The current minimum liability limits are $30,000 for each injured person, up to a total of $60,000 per accident, and $25,000 for property damage per accident. This basic coverage is called 30/60/25 coverage.

Because of car prices and the high cost of medical care, the minimum amounts might not be enough to pay all of the other driver’s costs if you’re in an accident. Other drivers could sue you to collect the difference. Consider buying more than the basic limits to protect yourself financially.

Breaking the Law

There are penalties for breaking the state’s financial responsibility law. A first conviction will result in a fine between $175 and $350. Additional convictions could result in fines of $350 to $1,000, suspension of your driver’s license, and impoundment of your car.

When you obtain an auto insurance policy, your insurance company will send you a proof-of-insurance card. You will need this card to prove that you have insurance when you

• are asked for it by a law enforcement officer
• have an accident
• register your car or renew its registration
• obtain or renew your driver’s license
• get your car inspected.

TexasSure

TexasSure is a verification system that lets law enforcement and county tax officials determine whether you have auto liability insurance. Police can use TexasSure when they pull you over to check if the car you’re driving has insurance.

TexasSure is intended to reduce the number of uninsured vehicles in Texas. An estimated 4 million vehicles – one in five – on Texas roads are uninsured. TexasSure also helps prevent the use of counterfeit proof of insurance cards and helps stop people from getting insurance so that they can get their car inspected or registered, and then cancelling their insurance afterward.

Texas Board Says It’s Falling Short in Regulating Bad Dentists

I like my dentist. And one of my best friends is a dentist. But this article in the Dallas Morning News makes me wonder about the degree of oversight exerted by the state agency responsible for licensing and regulating dentists. The bottom line, according to the article, is that oversight is poor at best. Here are the opening paragraphs:

The agency that polices Texas dentists told lawmakers that it doesn’t have enough resources or legal authority to crack down on careless and abusive dentists.

An advocacy group led the charge against the Texas State Board of Dental Examiners, telling a legislative panel that the regulatory board doesn’t do enough to discipline bad dentists or alert the public which dentists have been sanctioned.

“We’ve found [the] board to be resistant, abusive, arrogant toward the public and unwilling to make changes needed to protect public safety and health,” said Gwen Mitchell, president of Houston-based Texans for Dental Reform. “The consensus is that it only has one agenda, and that is to protect its own.”

The board, which oversees 15,000 dentists, 32,000 dental assistants and 12,000 hygienists, has long been dogged by complaints of shoddy oversight that leaves patients suffering and dentists unaccountable.

In response at the House Public Health Committee hearing, board leaders said the agency needs more funding and staff to keep up with the demands of approving licenses and reviewing the 500 to 600 cases it gets each year.

They can range from pulling the wrong teeth to injuring a patient, from abusing drugs to sexually assaulting a patient.

Medicare's Billion-Dollar Headache, and a Possible Solution

It may be unlikely that any piece of legislation, no matter how popular, can pass both houses of Congress in an election year. But when the Chamber of Commerce and the trial lawyers associations both agree on a proposed law it's hard to think of an excuse not to pass it.

The law involved is the SMART Act — the Strengthening Medicare and Repaying Taxpayers Act. The purpose of the act is to address a situation that has developed over the past several years, in which Medicare's arcane processes are making it difficult to settle personal injury cases in a timely fashion. This situation is hard on accident victims, on insurance companies, and on corporate defendants. Plus, it take almost forever for Medicare to recover money that is owed to them. The lawyers are perfectly willing to pay Medicare, but we can't get a straight answer as to how much we owe them.

Politico ran an excellent article on the Medicare problem recently. Here are excerpts:

Basically, all concerned agree that when an insurer other than Medicare — think auto insurance or liability — is responsible for medical bills, they should pay them. But Medicare’s clumsy system for calculating and obtaining those payments is driving everyone nuts and often drags out attempts to reach settlements and avoid courtroom clashes.

“We hope that the bills get passed and that this is the year,” said David Farber, an attorney with Patton Boggs whose client, the Medicare Advocacy Recovery Coalition, has pushed for the overhaul. ”We have deep congressional interest in this issue.”

Medicare, in almost every instance, is the primary payer for medical services for people 65 and older and some of the disabled. But in some cases, such as auto accidents, on-the-job injuries or slip-and-fall accidents, Medicare becomes the secondary payer. It may be billed first and pay for the immediate care — but the medical costs are really somebody else’s primary responsibility. So Medicare has the right to recoup them from the responsible party.

For instance, if a senior is injured in a car accident, the hospital bills Medicare. But if there’s a settlement, or if the case goes to court and a person is awarded damages, Medicare has a right to recoup at least some of what it paid. The settlement also must take into account future Medicare costs that could arise from the condition or injury.

And it’s at this point, Farber and others say, that the process breaks down, leaving attorneys, Medicare beneficiaries and businesses in the lurch. Legal settlements stall.

And the disconnect costs Medicare money — always a good way of stirring congressional interest. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that Medicare loses around $1.1 billion every decade largely because of the lax or complicated reporting procedures. Not a huge item within Medicare, but still a billion is a billion. And some who track this issue believe the real number is even higher.

One core problem is that Medicare is woefully unprepared to track down or manage such claims, Farber said. Until 2007, the outside parties didn’t even have to tell Medicare whether a claim had been settled. So the model for the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services was “pay and chase.” But it was more commonly “pay and don’t chase,” because the chasing process was just too cumbersome.

The situation began to change when Congress approved new mandatory reporting requirements for some health plans in 2007. But implementation was delayed, so the provisions only recently took hold. And according to the groups behind the SMART bill, the 2007 fixes didn’t, well, fix it. The whole process is still very slow.

“Everybody is frozen in place,” Farber said. “The CMS model is wrong on this. The CMS has to figure out how much it owes, and then it has to notify the parties.” And it needs to do so within a reasonable time period — which he said hasn’t been happening.

 

Texas’ New Insurance Chief Being Watched by Consumers, Lawmakers, and Industry

Texas has long had one of the weakest insurance departments in the nation — a department controlled by the insurance industry, and not at all helpful to consumers who have complaints. But now there is a new head of the department, and we can at least hope for improvement. However, so far there does not appear to be much reason to expect a shift from protecting insurance companies to protecting insurance consumers. The Dallas Morning News ran a profile of Eleanor Kitzman. Here are excerpts:

Five months on the job as Texas’ top insurance regulator, Houston native and former insurance executive Eleanor Kitzman is under close scrutiny by consumer groups, lawmakers and insurers as she deals with the first major rate filings of her tenure.

As head of the agency that regulates the state’s multibillion-dollar insurance industry, Kitzman will make decisions that directly affect the pocketbooks of most Texans — those who buy auto, home, health or other types of insurance — as well as the business fortunes of hundreds of insurers.

Her lengthy background in the industry — including the auto insurance business she started in South Carolina — gives her a leg up in overseeing the market, but also makes some consumer groups skeptical about whether she will hold companies accountable for anti-consumer practices.

“I have a different agenda than I did when I was running my insurance business or working as an attorney for insurance companies,” Kitzman said in a recent interview. “I know how the business works, so I know what insurance companies can do.”

Kitzman insisted her background and knowledge of insurance put her in position to “better serve consumers in every way.” But, she added, “having a robust, competitive market is very good for consumers.” She added: “I can also recognize gratuitous whining [by insurers] when I see it.” But consumer advocates fear she’s already shown her tendency to favor insurers.

In her first major decision last fall, Kitzman approved a rate plan by the state’s largest insurer, State Farm, that will begin switching many of the company’s homeowner policies to a higher deductible. Policyholders will have to shoulder a greater share of their property losses — while paying slightly higher rates. The overall rate increase was only 2 percent in North Texas, but Kitzman acknowledged to a Senate committee that State Farm customers will be getting less coverage for their money because of the new deductible.

A leading consumer group, Texas Watch, accused her of giving in to the “biggest bully” in the Texas insurance market. “This was Commissioner Kitzman’s first big test, and she failed miserably,” said the group’s Alex Winslow. “Insurance companies and their lobbyists are crowing over the decision.”

Links to the Attorney General in Each State

Do you ever need to find information from another's state's Attorney General's office? Here are links to each of them:

Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware Florida Georgia Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky

Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina

North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Utah Vermont Virginia Washington West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming

Featured Link - USA.gov

USA.gov is the main portal to all other U.S. government Web sites. It's a great starting point for any federal information you need. Here is the description from the site:

Whatever you want or need from the U.S. government, it's here on USA.gov.

Our Vision

As the U.S. government's official web portal, USA.gov makes it easy for the public to get U.S. government information and services on the web. USA.gov also serves as the catalyst for a growing electronic government.

Who "Owns" USA.gov?

Many people and organizations have had a hand in creating our comprehensive, award-winning portal to government. And the government worked fast—Internet time—to launch it and to keep it responsive to the American people and the world.

USA.gov is an interagency initiative administered by the U.S. General Services Administration's Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies. It got its start when Internet entrepreneur Eric Brewer, whose early research was funded by the Department of Defense, offered to donate a powerful search engine to government. That gift helped accelerate the government's earlier work to create a government-wide portal.

In June 2000, President Clinton announced the gift from the Federal Search Foundation, a nonprofit organization established by Brewer, and instructed that an official U.S. web portal be launched within 90 days. USA.gov went online on September 22, 2000 under the name FirstGov.gov. The GSA and 22 federal agencies funded the initiative in 2001 and 2002. Since 2002, USA.gov has received an annual appropriation from the U.S. Congress. In January 2007, FirstGov.gov officially changed its name to USA.gov.

So, who "owns" USA.gov? The American people.

Featured Link — Bill of Rights

Years ago I posted a link to the Constitution of the United States. Recent political discussions have prompted me to post another link — this one to the Bill of Rights. If you haven't read it recently perhaps you should.

HHS Initiative Aims to Reduce Medical Errors and Cut Costs

Print media sources widely covered an announcement last week that the Obama Administration was partnering with hospitals, insurers and other groups in order to reduce medical errors. Most sources considered the move a positive for the Administration. The Los Angeles Times reports, "The Obama administration announced a broad new initiative Tuesday to reduce medical errors, partnering with private insurers, business leaders, hospitals and patient advocates to tackle a problem that kills thousands of Americans every year." This "campaign, funded by the healthcare overhaul the president signed last year, aims to cut by 40% over the next three years the number of harmful preventable conditions such as infections that patients acquire in the hospital." HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius made the announcement about the Partnership for Patients initiative, and CMS Administrator Donald Berwick noted that the initiative has "big goals."

The AP reports, "Sebelius said the new national Partnership for Patients will help other hospitals adopt those proven safety strategies." The program "is funded by $1 billion from the new healthcare law, but has the potential to save Medicare up to $10 billion in that same time."

The New York Times "Prescriptions" blog quotes Sebelius as saying, "Americans go the hospital to get well, but millions of patients are injured because of preventable complications and accidents. ... Working closely with hospitals, doctors, nurses, patients, families and employers, we will support efforts to help keep patients safe, improve care, and reduce costs. Working together, we can help eliminate preventable harm to patients."

According to the CNN "The Chart" blog, the initiative "will save 60,000 lives over the next three years by reducing millions of preventable hospital-related complications and injuries. Sebelius says the new partnership will also save about $35 billion in healthcare costs including $10 billion in Medicare savings." Meanwhile, American Medical Association president Cecil Wilson, MD, said that the group's "physicians will be encouraged to do everything they can to reduce adverse events and hospital readmissions." Wilson added, "We know that if we ensure that a patient's primary care physician receives their discharge papers within 24 hours of their release from the hospital, the likelihood of hospital readmission will be reduced."

The Hill reports in its "Healthwatch" blog that HHS aims to accomplish the initiative's goals "by disseminating best practices that have already allowed the nation's best hospital systems to cut preventable errors significantly." Berwick noted, "Blame and accusation are not the answers; teamwork, improvement are the answers." The AMA's Wilson is also quoted as saying, "We all need to do everything we can to avoid preventable patient illness and injuries while also working to ensure that patients are able to heal without complications."

Reuters reports that another goal of the initiative is to cut hospital readmissions by at least 20 percent. Sebelius noted that 500 hospitals are already part of the effort.

CQ reports, "Because the program is voluntary, making good on the projections is initially going to require a disciplined effort by hospital and other healthcare CEOs to devote time and resources to the project -- in addition to their efforts to comply with the many requirements of the healthcare law." Berwick explained that "the changes needed in healthcare delivery to meet the goals of the project will help hospitals qualify in a few years for incentive payments under the health law to improve patient safety."

The PBS NewsHour "The Rundown" blog reports, "The partnership will begin by asking hospitals to focus on nine types of medical mistakes where there is potential for dramatic reductions in harm. These include pressure ulcers, drug reactions, childbirth complications and surgical site infections." Notably, Berwick will "oversee the new partnership." He stated, "Through strong partnerships at national, regional, state and local levels ... we are supporting the hospital community to significantly reduce harm to patients.

From the American Association for Justice news release.

FDA Scales Back Changes to Medical Device-Approval System

The AP reports, "The Food and Drug Administration is laying out plans to update the 35-year-old system used to approve most medical devices." Notably, the "agency announced a series of changes it plans to make this year, including streamlining the review process for some low-risk devices," although "regulators said they will delay a decision on the most drastic proposals, which would give the government new power to police device makers."

Bloomberg News reports, "While companies say the 30-year-old review program is out-dated and inconsistent, lawmakers have criticized the FDA for not requiring substantial testing of new devices that developers claim are similar to existing products." The agency "plans to clarify when clinical studies are required and create a council of top FDA experts to guarantee timely and predictable decision-making." Notably, "about 3,000 new devices are cleared each year through the 510(k) program by demonstrating they are at least as safe and effective as legally marketed products for the same use. These applications rarely require tests in people, and they make up 90 percent of device approvals, according to a Government Accountability Office report in 2009."

The Hill reports in its "Healthwatch" blog that the "FDA launched a review of the so-called 510(K) process 16 months ago following growing criticism that it is failing both the industry and consumers." Jeffrey Shuren, director of the Center for Devices and Radiological Health at the FDA said, "We have been hearing major concerns about the program from industry, consumers, healthcare professionals and others." Therefore, "these actions are intended to foster medical device innovation and support the safety and effectiveness of medical technologies in the United States."

Reuters also quotes Shuren as saying that these changes will result in "a smarter medical device program that supports innovation, keeps jobs here at home, and brings important, safe, and effective technologies to patients quickly."

The Wall Street Journal says that this move by the FDA is considered a victory for device makers, but the agency is denying that its decision was influenced by pressure from industry and some lawmakers. Shuren said, "We are implementing 47 [changes], and that's a lot. ... We went out with truly bold proposals" last year.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports, "The new rules drew a collective sigh of relief from the $350 billion medical technology industry, which has a considerable stronghold in Minnesota. But the activist group Public Citizen fired back that the agency cowed to industry pressKraft

From the American Association for Justice news release.